Booklist Archives | American Libraries Magazine

Covers for the 2019 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction: Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company That Addicted America, by Beth Macy (Little, Brown); Heavy: An American Memoir, by Kiese Laymon (Scribner); The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border, by Francisco Cantú (Riverhead); The Great Believers, by Rebecca Makkai (Viking); There There, by Tommy Orange (Knopf); and Washington Black, by Esi Edugyan (Knopf).

ALA Unveils 2019 Carnegie Medals Shortlist

October 24, 2018

2019 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction shortlist titles include: Nonfiction Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company That Addicted America, by Beth Macy (Little, Brown and Company). Macy’s years of reporting on the still-unfolding US opioid crisis earned her remarkable access to people whose lives have been upended. Dopesick is a timely … Continue reading ALA Unveils 2019 Carnegie Medals Shortlist →

Dewey Decibel Podcast: Looking Back at Books

By Phil Morehart | December 29, 2017

First, American Libraries Associate Editor Terra Dankowski talks with author Stephanie Powell Watts in a conversation taped right after her book No One Is Coming to Save Us was announced by Sarah Jessica Parker as the first selection in ALA’s Book Club Central. Next, American Libraries Associate Editor and Dewey Decibel host Phil Morehart speaks … Continue reading Dewey Decibel Podcast: Looking Back at Books →

The Sympathizer and Hold Still, Carnegie Medal winners

2016 Andrew Carnegie Medals

January 11, 2016

The selections were announced January 10 during the RUSA Book and Media Awards Ceremony and Reception that are part of the ALA Midwinter Meeting and Exhibits in Boston. Viet Thanh Nguyen’s bravura debut novel, The Sympathizer, illuminates the double-mindedness of a half-French, half-Vietnamese spy as he confronts impossible and dire situations in divided, war-torn Vietnam … Continue reading 2016 Andrew Carnegie Medals →

Left to right: Donna Seaman, Terry Tempest Williams, Mark Kurlansky, Ken Burns

The Writer as Witness

By Phil Morehart | January 9, 2016

Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker and writer Ken Burns’s response when asked how he chooses the subjects of his work encapsulates “The Writer as Witness,” the theme of the ERT / Booklist Author Forum at the 2016 ALA Midwinter Meeting in Boston. A writer must look both outward and inward to completely, accurately, and honestly tell a … Continue reading The Writer as Witness →

Finalists for the 2016 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction

2016 Carnegie Medals Shortlist Announced

October 19, 2015

2016 shortlisted titles include: Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction Shortlist H is for Hawk, by Helen Macdonald, published by Grove Press, an imprint of Grove Atlantic. Transfixed by books and birds of prey as a girl, Macdonald became a historian, writer, and professional falconer involved in avian research and conversation. After the sudden … Continue reading 2016 Carnegie Medals Shortlist Announced →

Anthony Doerr (left) with his book. Bryan Stevenson

Doerr, Stevenson win 2015 Andrew Carnegie Medals

By Laurie D. Borman | June 28, 2015

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the NBA’s all-time lead scorer, Basketball Hall of Fame inductee, and a New York Times–bestselling author, offered the keynote address. His first novel, Mycroft Holmes, about Sherlock Holmes’s older brother, will be published this fall by Titan Books. Abdul-Jabbar said his father was an avid reader who gave him books to find answers … Continue reading Doerr, Stevenson win 2015 Andrew Carnegie Medals →

A Celebration of Reading

By Karen Muller | May 18, 2015

The Mother of All Booklists: The 500 Most Recommended Nonfiction Reads for Ages 3 to 103, by William Patrick Martin, is basically a crowdsourced book list. The author gathered 155 authoritative and influential lists of award-winning books and recommended reading lists from a spectrum of organizations, including parenting groups, state commissions on libraries, libraries, library … Continue reading A Celebration of Reading →

Black History Month Graphic Novels for Your Collection

By Sarah Hunter | February 5, 2015

Need to refresh your Black History Month offerings? Here are some graphic novels, both fiction and nonfiction, that address Black History in dynamic, engaging ways. For Adults: Darkroom: A Memoir in Black and White By Lila Quintero Weaver. Illus. by the author. 2012. Univ. of Alabama, paper, $24.95 (9780817357146). Perry County, Alabama, was a hotbed … Continue reading Black History Month Graphic Novels for Your Collection →

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 →

Latest Library Links

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Tor Haugan writes: “Outside a select group of researchers, demography nerds, genealogists, and dataphiles, the US census is often considered a staid and decidedly unsexy part of American civic life, like serving on a jury or paying taxes. But a richly detailed, incisive, and delightfully wonky new exhibit in the UC-Berkeley Doe Library is challenging that. ‘Power and the People: The US Census and Who Counts’ opened in September, providing an inside look at some of the fascinating stories and hidden gems relating to the nationwide decennial drive for data through maps, data, and other library treasures.”

UC Berkeley Library News, Sept. 24
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Patrons of the Millinocket (Maine) Memorial Library can not only check out the latest Stephen King book, they can borrow one of the library’s many mountain bikes, canoes, kayaks, stand-up paddleboards, or sets of cross-country skis and take them out for a spin in the Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument or on the new Katahdin Area Trails. The equipment, which was donated to the library by the Outdoor Sport Institute, makes up the new Katahdin Gear Library, and is free and open to anyone. “If ecotourism and the outdoors is what’s going to save the Katahdin region, then that’s what we need to offer to our patrons,” said Director Matt DeLaney.

Bangor (Maine) Daily News, Sept. 23
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Barbara Fister writes: “Libraries are easy pickings for layoffs because librarians’ labor is almost by design fairly invisible. When you click on a database link and download an article, it may take only a second, but people did a lot of work to make that happen: They selected and negotiated a license annually for that database, put links to it in all the right places on the library website, changed them when the vendor randomly decided to rebrand, and did a ton of work to make sure the links to hundreds of thousands of individual articles actually work. When all goes well, it appears seamless. We want to save the time of the reader. But it’s a ton of labor that nobody sees.”

Inside Higher Ed: Library Babel Fish, Sept. 18
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Alexandra Alter writes: “In an era plagued by deep fakes and online disinformation campaigns, we still tend to trust what we read in books. But should we? In the past year alone, errors in books by several high-profile authors—including Naomi Wolf, Jill Abramson, Jared Diamond, Paul Dolan, and Michael Wolff—have ignited a debate over whether publishers should take more responsibility for the accuracy of their books. While in the fallout of each accuracy scandal everyone asks where the fact checkers are, but there isn’t broad agreement on who should be paying for what is a time-consuming, labor-intensive process in the low-margin publishing industry.”

New York Times, Sept. 22
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Mark Joseph Stern writes: “The Trump administration has threatened to withdraw federal funding from the Duke-UNC Consortium for Middle East Studies because it does not portray Christianity or Judaism in a sufficiently positive light. A letter from the Department of Education—sent on September 17 and reported by the New York Times—directed the program to emphasize ‘positive aspects’ of these and other non-Islamic religions in the Middle East. If it refuses, the department may strip the program of hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

Slate, Sept. 20
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Margaret Renkl writes: “When the Rev. Dan Reehil, a Catholic priest, ordered the removal of all Harry Potter books from the St. Edward parish school library in Nashville, Tennessee, in August, the community demanded an explanation. Reehil responded by email, noting that he had ‘consulted several exorcists, both in the United States and in Rome,’ and had been assured that the ‘curses and spells used in the books are actual curses and spells; which when read by a human being risk conjuring evil spirits into the presence of the person reading the text.’ Harry Potter and his friends don’t exist in real life, but they wrestle with real-life challenges: bullies, rejection, loneliness, fear, grief—and, yes, with clueless adults whose behavior is patently ludicrous.”

New York Times, Sept. 23
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Librarians at the Homewood (Ill.) Public Library celebrated Banned Books Week in 2017 by collaborating to create a parody music video titled Leer Despacito, a Banned Book Week parody of Despacito by Luis Fonsi with Justin Bieber. They adapted the visual look and music of Fonsi’s Spanish-language dancehall song. This black-and-white video shows young readers who encounter banned books by Hispanic authors.

Homewood Library YouTube channel, Sept. 24, 2017

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