Rousing Reads Archives | American Libraries Magazine

Two Debuts That Will Thrill

By Bill Ott | February 10, 2014

As anyone who has followed this column knows, I read a lot of mysteries. Sure, I love to follow the careers of my favorites—Michael Connelly, George Pelecanos, Daniel Woodrell, among many others—but the thing I enjoy most about reviewing mysteries for Booklist is happening on a stunning first novel by an unknown writer. Over the … Continue reading Two Debuts That Will Thrill →

Salinger and the Mysterious Vault

By Bill Ott | December 17, 2013

Several questions linger about the vault that many people believe the late J. D. Salinger left behind, purportedly filled with nearly half a century’s worth of unpublished manuscripts. Is there a vault? Does it really contain books soon to be published? And will the vault prove to be a treasure trove or a Pandora’s box … Continue reading Salinger and the Mysterious Vault →

Pelecanos, Locked and Loaded

By Bill Ott | October 22, 2013

I started reading George Pelecanos in 1997, when he published King Suckerman, which is, of all things, a fictional homage to the “blaxploitation” films of the 1970s. Combining the eccentric flash of Pulp Fiction, the noir soul of David Goodis, and the idiosyncratic heart of Elmore Leonard, this wildly violent novel effectively evokes the comic … Continue reading Pelecanos, Locked and Loaded →

Marisha Pessl’s Night Film Leaves a Lasting Impression

By Bill Ott | September 3, 2013

It’s the time of year when all of us connected to the publishing world begin speculating about the season’s big books. The major book shows—BookExpo America in May and ALA Annual Conference in June—have come and gone, leaving dozens of potential big books in their wakes. Now comes the predicting, the opinion swapping, and, one … Continue reading Marisha Pessl’s Night Film Leaves a Lasting Impression →

The Grief and Joy of Man’s Best Friend

By Bill Ott | August 12, 2013

I have no beef against dogs, but I’m not a fan of dog books: too smarmy (especially when the damn dogs talk) and way too heartbreaking when the damn dogs die. That all changes, however, when it’s E. B. White writing about dogs. Or anything else, for that matter. I love his children’s books, of … Continue reading The Grief and Joy of Man’s Best Friend →

Reading the Carnegie Longlist

By Bill Ott | May 28, 2013

Helping launch the Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction was one of the most exciting things I’ve ever done in my many years at Booklist. We had very little time to get the awards off the ground last year. The official announcement that Booklist, RUSA, and Carnegie Corporation of New York would … Continue reading Reading the Carnegie Longlist →

Hot Country

By Bill Ott | February 20, 2013

I’m a sucker for novels starring war correspondents, especially those set in tropical climes. You know what I’m talking about here—rumpled, sweat-stained seersucker suits; constant consumption of gin and tonics (ostensibly to fight off malaria); a few days’ growth of beard (before that look became hip); and, most important, a sense of constant innuendo hanging … Continue reading Hot Country →

Visiting Two Medicine Country

By Bill Ott | January 7, 2013

In 1978, when I first read Ivan Doig’s This House of Sky, I was a librarian at Timberland Regional Library in Washington State. Doig’s memoir of growing up in the Montana high country as the third member, along with his father and grandmother, of an unconventional but loving family struck me as a very special … Continue reading Visiting Two Medicine Country →

The Wild and Poetic Life of Westerns

By Bill Ott | October 29, 2012

I’m hooked on Westerns. Not the genre-blends that are popular today—the cowboy romances and the zombie Westerns—but the real thing: novels set in the Old West, featuring hard-drinking, rugged individualists who are good at doing the things that must be done and doing them with grace under pressure. Except for the setting, that definition also … Continue reading The Wild and Poetic Life of Westerns →

Gregorian Chants Meet Thelonious Monk

By Bill Ott | September 17, 2012

What prompted me to return to Gregorian chants? A novel, naturally: The Beautiful Mystery, by Louise Penny, the latest in her wildly popular series starring Armand Gamache, chief inspector of the Sûreté de Québec. That I am an unabashed fan of this series is itself a little surprising. Usually, I prefer my crime fiction to … Continue reading Gregorian Chants Meet Thelonious Monk →

An Homage to Film Noir

By Bill Ott | August 7, 2012

We all know about life imitating art, but what about novels imitating film—film noir in particular? Patrick Conrad’s No Sale (the words written in lipstick on a mirror by Gloria Wandrous, the Elizabeth Taylor character in Butterfield 8) is only the latest in a short list of noir fiction that draws on film noir. I’m … Continue reading An Homage to Film Noir →

Translit: New Genre Collapses Time and Space

By Bill Ott | March 28, 2012

At the recent Public Library Association conference in Philadelphia, my friend and Booklist columnist David Wright, who was giving a presentation on literary fiction, used a term I had never heard, translit, to describe that boundary-breaking kind of novel that shatters all the too-often pigeonholing categories we use to compartmentalize modern fiction. The term, David … Continue reading Translit: New Genre Collapses Time and Space →

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Genevieve Trainor writes: “The Guinness World Record holder for Most Prolific Book Thief is Ottumwa (Iowa’s) Stephen Blumberg. The 23,600 volumes he accumulated between the 1970s and his arrest in March of 1990 were all stashed in his 17-room home. Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska, got involved with Blumberg as part of the FBI’s efforts to return the stolen manuscripts and rare books to their museums and libraries. Referred to as the Omaha Project, the information science proving ground involved four weeks, 44 catalogers and reference librarians and 600 volunteer hours to determine who might be the rightful owners.”

Little Village (Dubuque, Iowa), Dec. 4
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Casey Newton writes: “At the moment, no one knows for sure whether the large language models that are now under development will achieve superintelligence and transform the world. And in that uncertainty, two primary camps of criticism have emerged. The first camp, which I associate with the external critics, holds that artificial intelligence (AI) is fake and sucks. The second camp, which I associate more with the internal critics, believes that AI is real and dangerous. Today I want to lay out why I believe AI is real and dangerous.”

Platformer, Dec. 5
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Latia Ward writes: “One way to keep current with what students think of the library and its services is through Student Library Advisory Committee meetings. These meetings are a way to gather feedback and reinforce the library as a welcoming place. How do librarians create a welcoming environment within Student Library Advisory Committee meetings? Librarians create a welcoming environment through community, purpose, and dedicated space.” Also see part 1 of this blog post.

RIPS Law Librarian Blog, Nov. 13, Dec. 5
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Eleanor Hecks writes: “Few things are as frustrating to a user as when a site won’t respond. Unfortunately, it’s also an all-too-common scenario. Graceful degradation is a design approach that ensures the basics of a website will still function even if specific individual parts of it stop working. The approach removes single points of failure: just because one thing stops working doesn’t mean the system as a whole fails. A site following this principle fails in pieces instead of all at once, so the most important features remain available when some components encounter an error.”

Smashing Magazine, Dec. 6
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Camruinn Morgan-Rumsey and Lexi Lepof write: “On December 3, Knox County (Tenn.) schools received a list from the district of books to be removed from school libraries under Tennessee’s Age-Appropriate Materials Act. Knox County’s board of education voted in July, passing a policy to remove ‘explicit’ books from everyday student access in response to the new law. Some of the books on the list of nearly 50 titles might surprise parents. Among those to be removed are Shel Silverstein’s A Light in the Attic and Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five.”

WVLT-TV (Knoxville, Tenn.), Dec. 4
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Joe Foley writes: “Copyright rules vary from country to country and have changed over time. In the US, works created between 1929 and 1963 that gave notice and renewed copyright have 95 years from their first publication date. That means that on January 1, 2025, a host of works from 1929 will enter the public domain. This means that copyright will expire on Buck Rogers, Captain Easy, Horace Horsecollar, Tintin, Hal Foster’s first Tarzan comic strips and, yes, Popeye.” Other notable works entering public domain in the United States include the Marx Brothers’ first film, The Cocoanuts, contralto Marian Anderson’s first record, and Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms.

Creative Bloq, Dec. 7; Everybody’s Libraries, Dec. 3, Dec. 7; Public Domain Review, Dec. 10
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Brittany Adams writes: “The digital landscape of libraries is expanding rapidly, with an increasing shift towards electronic resources and online services. As members of the library community, we’re witnessing a transformative era where physical collections are complemented—and sometimes replaced—by digital ones. This transition offers new opportunities for enhancing accessibility and engagement, but it also presents challenges, especially for young patrons and their families. It is essential to equip children and their caregivers with the tools and knowledge they need to navigate this evolving space confidently.”

ALSC Blog, Dec. 9

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