Special Orders Don't Upset Us at Thomas Ford

Lately, I have been making numerous special orders to get books not available through Baker & Taylor, Barnes & Noble, or Amazon. I'm finding most of these items through news stories or features in the Chicago Tribune. Today the item is My Fall From Grace by James J. Laski, which is touted in a column by John Kass. The columnist says that in the book "Laski discusses crooked Chicago politics, Mayor Richard M. Daley's selective memory, and the mayor's private advice to Laski on the use of 'buffers' just like in 'The Godfather' movies." The place to order this self-published book is a website called Author House.

Stop the presses: Now the book is on Amazon. I'm sure it was not there earlier. Well, pretty sure.

Earlier in the week, the book was A Mile Square of Chicago by Marjorie Warville Bear. According to columnist Eric Zorn, it is "a sprawling and meticulously detailed remembrance of the neighborhood of Bear's youth -- the area on the West Side between Ashland and Western Avenues, from Lake Street on the north to Harrison Street on the south, just after the turn of the 20th Century." In his Sunday column, Zorn reported that Bear finished the book 38 years ago and died 26 years ago. The only way to get this posthumous publication is through Google Base. I ordered the book Monday, and it was here on Wednesday.

A month ago, the book was Life is Delicious: A Collection of Recipes from the Hinsdale Junior Women's Club, which was reviewed in the "Good Eating Section" of the Tribune on January 9. Hinsdale is a neighboring suburb of Western Springs, so we wanted the book. The book is available via the organization's website. I called the toll free number and a member hand delivered the book a couple of days later.

All of these books are of local interest. We want to have as much as we can about the Chicago are for students and general readers who grew up in the area. With the library credit card and our Internet access, we continue to watch for items like these.

"Hold the pickles, hold the lettuce, special orders don't upset us."

Best Book Lists Abound

I enjoy the end of the year when best book lists are everywhere - in newspapers, magazines, websites, and blogs. There are always items that catch my eye that I passed over first time around. Here are a few lists that look particularly interesting to me.

Best Books of 2007 from Reader’s Advisor OnlineReader

Book Sense Picks

Economist Books of the Year

Ten Best Historical Novels by Sarah Johnson of Reading the Past

Best of 2007 from the Village Voice

800-CEO-READ Best Business Books

ricklibrarian's helpful hints for the selection librarian

To make our library collection relevant to our public, we need to have many of the book titles that people see when they are out and about our area. In the western suburbs of Chicago, one of the places people go is the Morton Arboretum, which has an attractive collection of books on nature, wildlife, gardening, and landscaping in its gift shop. While I am there, I snap photos of the book displays with my camera (which I always take to the arboretum). With digital photography, I am able to record quickly what is being promoted and then check our collection when I return to the library. It costs nearly nothing other than my time, which is minimal. You could do this with your cellphone, too.


Back at the library I found that we had all of these books in our collection, except The Mountain Bike Trail Guide. Because this third edition is already nearly five years old, I will wait to buy a probable fourth edition in the future. (Click this photo for a closer look.)



Hardly anyone in our area owns this book. Because it looks good, I ordered it.



How did I miss this one? Only a few libraries have it so far. I ordered it this morning.

I also took photos in the gift shop at the Chicago Botanic Garden this weekend. I ordered three books from those photos.

Look for more ricklibrarian's helpful hints in the future.

How Readers Are Finding Their Books Survey Results

It has been over a week since I posted my poll using Zoho Creator. To date twenty-six responses are in, including two of my own to see if the form worked. Here are the results, showing how select readers are finding the books they read:

I read a review - 11
A friend recommended the book - 3
A librarian recommended the book - 2
I was given the book - 0
I was assigned the book - 1
I found it on a library shelf or display - 7
I found the book at a bookstore - 1
I found the book online - 0

One person made creative use of the title field to tell me they learned of the book by seeing its author on television.

I only added the "librarian recommended" choice after a comment from a reader who had chosen "friend recommended" because there was not a closer choice. He said he did consider the librarian a friend, so it was okay. The upshot is that the counts are fuzzy.

Reading interests of the respondents are diverse. Fourteen of the books are nonfiction and twelve are fiction. Three of the books are not held by libraries in the Metropolitan Library System (Chicago area). One is in German. One was published in Australia.

Click here to see the Zoho table where the responses reside. Included are the titles that readers entered. You can also search or filter the table, which is pretty cool.

The form still resides on my previous post if you wants to respond and then see the table change.

Thanks, everyone.

Ricklibrarian's Books That Matter 2006 and Other Awards

As the year ends, many newspapers, magazines, journals, and other media publish their best books lists (Seldovia Public Library links to lists). As I read them, I add books to my library's shopping carts and to my personal wish-to-read list. Some of these are books that I had not noticed when first published. Others are books that I had passed over but now reconsider. I enjoy and benefit much from the end-of-the-year lists.

As you might guess, I am now presenting my own best of 2006 list. I have tried to think of a clever award name (like the Ricky), but that seems a little too silly. So I am going to call them "Books That Matter." Some, but not all, do tend toward the serious side. I am also adding some music, film, library, and web awards, all chosen through personal deliberation.

Not every item chosen is actually from 2006. My encounter with each was in 2006.


Nonfiction

Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs, and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries by Marilyn Johnson

Enrique's Journey: The Story of a Boy's Dangerous Odyssey to Reunite with His Mother by Sonia Nazario

Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade by Ann Fessler

Human Cargo: A Journey Among Refugees by Caroline Moorehead

Impresario: The Life and Times of Ed Sullivan by James Maguire

White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good by William Easterly

Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl by Timothy Egan


Memoir

Truck: A Love Story by Michael Perry


Novels

Beasts of No Nation by Uzodinma Iweala

Timothy; or, Notes of an Abject Reptile by Verlyn Klinkenborg

Digging to America by Anne Tyler


Short Stories

Brief Encounters with Che Guevara by Ben Fountain

Man Who Could Fly and Other Stories by Rudolfo Anaya

Stick Out Your Tongue by Jian Ma


Graphic Novel

Mom's Cancer by Brian Fies


Poetry

Blue Front by Martha Collins

Here, Bullet by Brian Turner

Talking Horse and the Sad Girl and the Village Under the Sea by Mark Haddon


Audio Books

Guitar: An American Life by Tim Brookes

Ordinary Man: An Autobiography by Paul Rusesabagina

Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different by Gordon S. Wood


Music CDs

Just My Heart for You by Curtis and Loretta

We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Session by Bruce Springsteen


Films

Wordplay

Yesterday

The Queen

A Prairie Home Companion

Little Miss Sunshine


Book for Professional Librarians

Whole Library Handbook 4


Individual Book Review

Nonfiction Readers Anonymous


Library Book Review

Reader's Club at the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County


Google Tool of the Year

Google Custom Search Engine (which runs LISZEN and Librarian's Book Revoogle)


Library Science Search Engine

LibWorm


Library Conference of the Year

American Library Association in New Orleans (this links to a list of bloggers' reports)


Library Science Article

Collaboration as the Norm in Reference Work by Jeffrey Pomerantz


I look forward to 2007. There will more good reading, listening, and viewing. Have a Happy New Year!

Update. Thanks to librarian.net for the Seldovia link.