Answers about ricklibrarian

I think more and more that the best thing about library conferences is meeting people. This morning I received an email with questions about writing my blog from a librarian I met at the American Library Association Annual Conference this week in Chicago. Since I have not really said much about the blog itself in a long time, I am also posting modified answers to her questions.

I stay at least partially informed on book and library industry trends by reading articles linked from AL Direct and Library Link of the Day as well as listening to the New York Times Book Review podcast. I read newspapers and journals. I also learn at librarians' meeting and from my Facebook friends.

I receive no dollars or cents from my blog. I have never tried because I want to stay totally independent. Money is not as valuable as peace of mind.

I ignore most of the email I get from marketing agents trying to get me to read books. Maybe twice a year I might be willing to read something and tell the author/agent that I make no promises about reviewing. It has probably been more than a year since I have reviewed anything on ricklibrarian by request. I mostly review books from libraries. I have requested maybe three electronic readers copies through Edelweiss.

I review instead of promote. I usually stick to books and media and ignore products and services. I might comment on a product/services good for libraries or readers, but it rare.

I have enjoyed blogging, and it led to my writing two readers' advisory books. It has made me lots of friends. That's the payoff.

Six Years of ricklibrarian and Many Years of Letters

Today I have been blogging for six years. I started with a short review of the novel Hannah Coulter by Wendell Berry, which is still one of my favorite books. I have given it to a lot of readers at my library. It is not actually representative of what I review, as I read much more nonfiction. I also now aim for three paragraphs instead of the review journal model of about 150 words. I feel the longer review lets me sound more like I'm writing you a letter.

I miss writing letters. I used to keep a box of nice masculine stationery (nothing flowery and no perfume) in my desk and bought sheets of commemorative stamps to attach to the top right hand corner of the matching envelopes. I enjoyed composing messages to friends in far-flung places and then getting replies with out-of-state or foreign postmarks. Weeks might go by before a response, but I cheered finding replies in our mailbox. I always enjoyed receiving news and stories paired with kind words and encouragement from my friends in other places. (I still have boxes of letters in the closet and am contemplating a conservation project.)

I have reaped many benefits from writing this blog, but I have always wished that more readers would comment - satisfy my letter-in-the-mailbox desire. Many bloggers have told me the same tale of too few comments. We're all Charlie Brown's waiting for Valentines. I understand that many readers are busy and just pass by to see the latest posts, reading only when the subjects appeal. Often, they may feel they have nothing to say about a book that they have not read. I am more likely to find comments when I write about something other than books or other library materials. I got many comments last summer when I wrote about the library job market.*

When I finish my latest book project, I may try to reflect more on library services and culture, like I did in the early days of this blog. What do you think? Send me a comment.

* By the way, we now have another opening for a tech savvy reference librarian who enjoys event programming, writing, and readers' advisory. Check the Thomas Ford Library website.

ricklibrarian Personal Cliche Report

I did not bingo in the game of Cliche Bingo.

In her post at the Book Examiner on March 11, Michelle Kerns identified twenty words or phrases that she believes book reviewers use too often, tiring book review readers with their lazy language. In a subsequent post on March 15, she modified the list slightly to make Bingo cards. Seeing the fun, I decided to play the game. I searched five years of this blog using the Blogger search box to see how often I had used these words and phrases. Taking the first Bingo card, I failed to score five in a row up, down, across, or on the diagonal. I did, however, have to place a few beans on the board. (I remember playing Bingo with dried pintos as a kid.)

Here is my report.

First line across:

• compelling - A whole pile of beans right at the start. I have used "compelling" eleven times just since January 1, 2009. One use was to say a book was "not compelling." Of course, I have read a lot of good books that I felt driven to read in that time. What word would you have used?
• tour de force - I have never used this French phrase. I pretty much stick to English.
• nuanced - I have never used this term in five years of blogging, but as I look at it I think it could be occasionally handy.
• pitch-perfect - Never used.
• gritty - I have used the word once in five years.

Second line across:

• beautifully written - Zero.
• thought-provoking - I used this phrase in my very first post in 2005 and in ten posts since. I am surprised I have not use it more, for many books make me think, but that is the purpose of a book. Maybe it is only news when a book does not make me think. Remind me not to say "thought provoking" again.
• x meets x - Zero again. The idea here is "boy meets girl" or "predator meets prey" or such. I do not know how to search this, but I am sure that I have never used this construction.
• readable - Pile the beans. Fifteen uses in five years. Not a very inspiring adjective.
  
• powerful - While I have used this term frequently, I defend most of those uses, which are applied to the description of plots or characters. "Powerful storms" and "powerful politicians" seem acceptable to me. Only five times in five years have I used "powerful" to describe the book or movie that I reviewed.

Third line across:

• lyrical - One use in five years.
• at once - Zero.
• cliche-free - Is this the free space in the card? I did search. I have never used the term.
• timely - Six times in five years.
• sweeping - One use.

Fourth line across:

• in the tradition of - One use in five years.
• haunting - Three uses, all of which were in music reviews.
• stunning - Eight times.
• unputdownable - Zero. I guess some reviewers are trying to avoid "compelling."
• unflinching - Never used but maybe I could.

Fifth line across:

• rollicking - Never used the word.
• riveting - Six times in five years. All six are in the last two years. Am I letting my writing slide? I see that I used "stunning" and "riveting" in one of last year's reviews. Shocking.
• epic - Most of the uses of "epic" were actually in the titles of books. The authors, not me, used the word. I did manage to use the word seven times on my own, twice in describing Tolkien books.
• that said - Once.
• fully realized - Never.

As you can see, the beans never made it across the board. If you want, you can plot the beans up and down and diagonally to see no five in a row. I did not score all four corners either. Of course, I am glad not winning this game. I do see a little space here for improvement - "readable" and "thought provoking" in particular. I am going to keep a Bingo card handy as a reminder and tool for better review writing.

Books and Blogs, Made for Each Other?

The verdict on whether the Internet is killing reading is still out, as evidence presented often says more about its source than the readers being studied. What is clear is that an attempt is being made to utilize the web to increase reading, especially of books, as a community of book lover bloggers has grown. Included is this community are readers, librarians, authors, and publishers, each contributing to the promotion of books, but often for different reasons. At Booklist/Booklist Online: Books and Blogs, Made for Each Other?, Keir Graf of Booklist and a panel of bloggers discussed the relationship of blogs with books and its prospects for the near future.

The panel included the following:

• Mary Burkey of AudioBooker, who started her blog to keep track of audio titles that she had read. Her independent blog was later acquired by Booklist.
• John Green, a former Booklist employee, who with his brother posts videos to You-Tube as Vlogbrothers. He has also written a novel Looking for Alaska.
• Kaite Mediatore Stover of Kansas City Public Library, who posts to Book Group Buzz for Booklist.
• Nora Rawlinson, who has never been a Booklist employee. She was, however, the librarian at Baltimore County Public Library who uttered "give them what they want" and has worked as an editor for both Library Journal and Publishers Weekly. She is now writing the blog, EarlyWord, which is a for-profit effort.

Keir listed some qualities that make blogs useful to book professionals:

• Blogs offer immediacy. Bloggers can address issues quickly and can discuss books at the time they are published or are otherwise in the news.
• Blog writing is more personal and casual, allowing for a friendlier feel, attracting some loyal followers.
• Because blog postings are often short, writers have to hone more concise writing skills.
• Comments from blog readers start conversations that may bring forth issues that the blog writer did not address. They may also correct errors or otherwise keep the blog writer honest.
• Through comments, bloggers know their readers better.

Here are some highlights from this discussion:

Authority is something in which print excelled in its prime. Readers trusted the reviewers in newspapers and magazines, such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, or Atlantic Monthly. Now that these publications have their own blogs, that authority has transferred to its blog writers. Nora thought this advantage would in time diminish as other brand names are established. Some bloggers have name recognition for being on the scene early. Kaite said that with so many people blogging it is now difficult for a new blogger to get recognized.

Few book bloggers make a profit - or anything. They do not often get readers the way that niche technology bloggers do. Book bloggers blog for love of books.

Well-produced book trailers may be a passing fad. There is not enough money in the book market to support most expensive publicity, and the panel opinion was that the novelty will soon wear off. John said that most blog readers seek authenticity and are suspicious of slick marketing.

None of the panelists thought that writing blogs hurt their print writing style. Mary thought that bloggers free of institutional ties are franker in their blogs.

None of the speakers thought that Twitter would replace blogging. It is a good vehicle for posting links to reviews on blogs or telling others what you are reading. John said that Twitter is more important to people in Third World countries because they can tweet and read from cellphones, which seem to be harder to restrict than Internet access.

Kaite liked that bloggers sometimes review old books. It is not all about buzz.

Menage at Citizen Reader

Citizen Reader will hold another dual book discussion on Monday, March 30. The books involved this time are The Braindead Megaphone by George Saunders and Dangerous Laughter by Steven Millhauser. The first is essays and the second is stories. You can join in the discussion through commenting to the blog post.

I have finished The Braindead Megaphone. While I thought some of the essays were useless, others were brilliant and even moving. I am glad I stuck with the book. I will try to read the other book by Monday.

Citizen Reader often has pretty tough assessments of popular books. It will be interesting to see how this discussion goes.

On My Reading Database and Four Years of ricklibrarian

It was four years ago today that I posted my first book review on ricklibrarian, a brief introduction and a paragraph about Hannah Coulter: A Novel by Wendell Berry, still one of my favorite books. Not sure whether I could sustain a blog, I put in a lot of early effort and posted for forty-something days in a row. I did keep it going, though not at that pace, and it is still here. I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoy writing.

On this fourth anniversary, my thought are traveling back twenty years to another anniversary. In February 1989 I left my job as a reference librarian at the Suburban Library System's Reference Service to be a stay-at-home dad. Between taking photos of my daughter Laura and changing her diapers, mostly when she was napping, I found time to read. We soon got our first home computer so I could work from home as subcontractor to an information broker. Using an acoustic coupler and a phone, I dialed up Dialog, BRS, VuText, DataTimes, and Lexis databases for business information. I also used WordPerfect on the computer to start a reading list.

That reading list later became a database, and I now have the titles of everythingthat I have read for nearly twenty years. Yesterday, I entered all the titles from 2008 and 2009. They had been in the reading notebook that I got as a summer reading prize from the Downers Grove Public Library in 1995. Being caught up, I decided to sort the title and see what I might learn.

I first sorted by year and found that I did not really read much in 1989. From the date I began the list (not remembered) until the end of the year, I finished 19 books. Most were light fiction or baseball books, including Summer of '49 by David Halberstam and The Best Short Stories of Ring Lardner. I also read some funny books, including PreHistory of The Far Side by Gary Larson and The Minnesota Book of Days by Howard Mohr, the latter famous for saying "You bet!" and "Whatever" on the Prairie Home Companion. I also read with interest Microcomputers and the Reference Librarian by the late Patrick Dewey, an pioneering SLS librarian who helped many of us begin to use computers.

Next I sorted by author. I was surprised to find that I have read much more fiction than I would have claimed, most of it classics, mysteries, Southern writers, or Third World authors. In addition to Charles Dickens and George Eliot, there are mysteries by Margery Allingham, Charlotte MacLeod, Ellis Peters, and Alexander McCall Smith (often reading them right after Bonnie). The long list of P.G. Wodehouse titles shows that I have dipped into the silly world of Bertie and Jeeves quite often. In a more serious vein, I have tried many books by Doris Lessing, Muriel Spark, William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, and Wendell Berry. I have also read five books by Kenyan author Ngugi wa Thiong'o, as well as several Latin American authors.

I found that I have read twice as many memoirs as biographies. I was a little disturbed to learn that I read The Life and Times of the Last Kid Picked by David Benjamin twice, in 2002 and 2007. How could I have not remembered that book five years later? Maybe it is a data error. I recently thought it might be interesting to read Days of Grace: A Memoir by Arthur Ashe. Oops! I already did back in 1993. Maybe I will again.

My memory is not totally shot. In fact, reading over the lists, I have many visions of where I was when reading the books. I remember reading The Moviegoer by Walker Percy outside a tent in a camp in the Serengeti in Tanzania, The Coalwood Way by Homer Hickam outside a cabin in the Badlands in South Dakota, and Sibley's Birding Basics by David Allen Sibley in the LITA Forum hotel in Houston. I also remember friends and family recommending titles. Among many titles, Bonnie gave me The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith. Joyce Saricks gave me The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro. My blogging friends (listed to the right on this page) have recommended many others. Even that little girl in the picture above is now suggesting titles to me. These are lots of good memories.

The reading notebook, the database, and this blog all help me remember the titles of the many books that I have read. They also help me share. That's what this is all about.

Thank You Blogger, Thank You Readers

I have had thousands of extra readers over the weekend, as Blogger made me Blog of Note on Friday. Since it was a weekend, I got to stay first in the queue two extra days. Thank you, Blogger.

Thank you, readers. I hope my blog was worth your visit. I hope lots of you now want to read about the black baseball players of the 1950s and 1960s, about Lady Bird Johnson, and the works of Wendell Berry. I hope you can find libraries that own The Power of Art DVDs. (See my posts of the last week.)

Thank you, everyone who commented on the postings. I appreciate the the kind words. Several of you asked questions that I am still contemplating.

Thank you to those of you who identified some book review blogs. I will post about these soon.

I did delete a few of comments because they offered book reviews and when I linked to the blogs I found no reviews. If you did this, post some reviews and try again. I also deleted some spam.

Thank you, librarians, who inspire me to blog.

Welcome, Overnight Visitors

One of my early morning routines is to check on this blog at Sitemeter. I am alerted if anything has gone wrong or right in the night. Also, I can see in a general sense who has been reading the posts while I slept. What I particularly like about the early morning list is its international flavor. This morning's list has a really good mix of visitors from around the globe.

Here are a few overnight highlights:

Someone in Bulgaria read my review of A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah.

Someone in the Philippines read about the Thomas Ford library staff tour of the Marion E. Wade Center, a special library focusing on C. S. Lewis and his friends.

Someone in Switzerland read my review of A Country Year by Sue Hubbell.

Someone in New Zealand read my review of An Ordinary Man by Paul Rusesabagina.

Someone in Australia read my review of the 6th edition of Genreflecting by Diana Tixier Herald.

Someone in Belarus read about the new Saturday edition of the Chicago Tribune Books Section.

Someone in Hong Kong read my review of The Good Women of China by Xinran.

Someone in Turkey came to the blog's main page.

Americans are often criticized for being ignorant of the rest of the world. We sometimes fear people from other countries who we assume have different beliefs and values and want to keep them away from us. We really do not know what interests them. What I think my overnight visitors show is that we have much in common. We are all reading.

It is time to look beyond our nationalities and consider ourselves citizens of the world. It is easy when we go out via the Internet. It is also time to share some more good books. Everyone is invited to read.

Library of Congress Blog

It must be really inspiring to work at the Library of Congress. Matt Raymond has been there for seven months. He attends meeting on lofty topics, such as World Digital Library and the National Book Festival. He wanders hallowed halls and sees great architecture out his window. He meets authors and hears bits of their works in progress. He hears about upcoming exhibits. Now he writes the Library of Congress Blog.

Today Matt is asking whether blogs are serials and should they get ISSN numbers. (One comment is that there should be an IBSB or International Blog Serial Number.) He also has some day-in-history information, including the fact that it is Frederick Law Olmsted's birthday.

I have enjoyed the first week of Library of Congress Blog and look forward to more.

Plunk Biggio

A number of library bloggers have posted recently about the non-library blogs that they read. In contrast, I read very few blogs other than library related ones. (I guess I am old - I'm reading books and wishing I had more time for reading books.) I could say that all the book blogs are not library related, but for me they are. I can think of one non-library blog that I read regularly - seasonally - Plunk Biggio.

Plunk Biggio is rather silly in a way. How can someone write for years about whether or not Houston Astros second baseman Craig Biggio will or will not get hit by a pitched ball when at bat during a game? Well, there is the fact that Biggio is second on the all time list for being hit by a pitch. Also, baseball fans can gather statistics and analyse the game to infinity. Being a big Biggio fan, I find it very entertaining.

So, all summer long, the career baseball record that I will be watching (instead of the other record bound to be broken) is hit by pitch.

Library Dust by Michael McGrorty

Library Dust is a blog from Michael McGrorty, a new librarian, who has also been a U.S. Navy enlistee, a labor investigator, a private investigator, a probation officer, a novelist, and a poet. Writing is obviously very important to him. Many of his entries on Library Dust are fully developed essays that could easily fit in a magazine or newspaper. His December 28 entry about the fate of the library in Salinas, California is eloquent. He write to us as if we are friends. I enjoyed reading about his pickup truck in his review of the book High and Mighty by Keith Bradsher. You do not have to be a librarian to understand Library Dust. We should all take writing lessons from Michael McGrorty.