Goodreads announces Best Titles for 2012

If you love to read and haven't discovered or used Goodreads yet, now is a great time to see what they have to offer with the GoodReads Choice Awards. 

This 2012 Best Books list is voted by readers.  Take a look.  It may help with your choices for gifts as well as what you should read next!

SH

Best Books for 2012

It's Holiday shopping time and you may want to check out the best books of the year to give to your best friend or a loving family member for those long winter evenings?  Try the following recommendations from popular lists!

Publishers Weekly Best Books 2012

Kirkus Reviews Best Fiction Books of 2012 (Nonficton list will be released on December 3 at same link)

Library Journal Best Books of 2012 by Genre The index for genre you want is on the right side of the page

Amazon Best Books of the Year Editors Picks

Massachusetts Book Awards 2012 and Must-Reads.   There is a link to download the entire list for fiction and nonfiction.

National Book Awards 2012 List includes the winners and finalists

Happy Reading!!!  SH

New York Times Book Review Top 10 Best Books of 2010 and 100 Notable Books of 2010

For your reading pleasure, the New York Times announced its Top 10 Best Books of 2010 on December 1, 2010. They include many titles found on other lists. Click on the title to find out more about it or reserve the book for pick up.

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen (Fiction, Franzen, J.)

The New Yorker Stories by Ann Beattie. (Fiction, Beattie, A.)

Room by Emma Donoghue. (Fiction, Donoghue)

Selected Stories by William Trevor. (Fiction, Trevor)

A Visit from the Goon Squad. by Jennifer Egan. (Egan, J)

Apollo's Angels: A History of Ballet. by Jennifer Homans. (792.8 Homans)

Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff. (Biography, Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt/Schiff)

Emperor of all Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee. (616.994 Mukherjee)

Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics (1954-1981) with Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines and Anecdotes by Stephen Sondheim. (Oversize 782.14 Sondheim)

The Warmth of other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson. (304.8 Wilkerson)

100 Notable Books of 2010 may be found on the New York Times website. SH

Image at top of page from New York Times Website.

Best Cookbooks of 2010

Publisher's Weekly's current issue shares their editor's choice for best books of the year including cookbooks. Several of of their picks are in our collection for you to peruse and enjoy.

Mark Bittman's The Food Matters Cookbook

Molly O'Neill's One Big Table : 600 Recipes from the Nation's Best Home Cooks, Farmers, Pit-Masters and Chefs

The Frankies Spuntino Kitchen Companion & Cooking Manual by Frank Falcinelli

In the Green Kitchen : Techniques to Learn by Heart by Alice Waters

Around My French Table : More than 300 Recipes from My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan.

What do I read next? Try Overbooked!

OVERBOOKED: A RESOURCE FOR READERS

With this blog and our Staff Picks blog, the WFL staff tries to bring titles that may of interest to readers in the community. There are many websites that are available to check for titles of interest including LibraryThing, Genrefluent, Bookpage, GoodReads, Shelfari, etc.

Today I would like to introduce you to Overbooked, created by Ann Chambers Theis in 1994. It was the winner of the 2008 Louis Shores-Greenwood Publishing Award for excellence in reviewing books. The site claims to provide "annotated lists of nonfiction, fiction and mystery books which received starred reviews [from library journals Booklist, Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, and Kirkus Reviews all in one place], themed booklists, featured title lists, and hot lists of US fiction [new] releases and notable books." (from website)

So if you are unsure what to read next, try Overbooked to see what may meet your tastes! SH

Best of the Best of the Year

If it's the end of the year,
it's the the beginning of the "Best" season: Best books, best movies, best songs, best ads, best supporting role by a politician's spouse, best green and yellow toys with 2 USB ports for 4-year-olds, etc. Don't get me wrong, I love those lists. But what with the multitude of "Best Books of the Year," I always wait for the "Best of 'The Best Books of the Year.'" This year VQR (Virginia Quarterly Review) has combined the lists from 10 reputable sources, including the NY Times, Washington Post and Publisher's Weekly and ranked the books in order of most appearances. A nice touch, I think. Leading the list is Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel, with 6 hits. (If you hurry, there's a rental copy available right now, or at least there was at 11:35 am...)
--RL

Oprah's 10 Terrific Reads of 2009

Oprah choses the following books as Terrific Reads of 2009.

Another list for your reading pleasure.

The Bolter. Osborne, Francis.

Dreaming in Hindi. Rich, Katherine Russell.

Little Bee. Cleave, Chris.

Blame. Huneven, Michelle.

Losing Mum and Pup. Buckley, Christopher.

Zeitoun. Eggers, Dave.

Say You're One of Them. Akpan, Uwem.

Some Things that Meant the World to Me. Mohr, Joshua.

The Invisible Mountain. De Robertis, Carolina.

Strength in what Remains. Kidder, Tracy


Reserve your copies today! SH

The Omnivore's Dilemma

"What shall we have for dinner?" is often called the omnivore's dilemma as we choose among the countless offerings of nature and try to assess our foods' safety, nutritive value,
health benefits and potential implications for the health of our environment. Best selling author Michael Pollan's brilliant and often shocking examination of eating in America is an eye opener. As we begin to recognize the profound implications of our everyday food choices, we realize that we really are what we eat and what we eat can remake the world. -DB

What to give, what to give...

A Book (of course)
National Public Radio has put together a list of recommended gift books for the holiday season. The Big Pictures: Best Gift Books 2008 gives a nice little book talk for around 20 titles with lots of nice pictures. Included are The Oxford Project (in which the author photographs everyone in his town and then again 20 years later) and Seen Behind the Scene: Forty Years of Photographing on Set--taking the reader backstage in the production of some classic films. As a special bonus, the NPR site includes a little phot gallery with some of the books. (Note that this list is part of a Best Books of 2008 series which includes Best Foreign Fiction and 10 Best Cookbooks.
RL