Check Your Shelf

Political Audiobooks, Pirated Manga, and More Library News

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Katie McLain Horner

Contributing Editor

Katie's parents never told her "no" when she asked for a book, which was the start of most of her problems. She has an MLIS from the University of Illinois and works full time as a Circulation & Reference Manager in Illinois. She has a deep-rooted love of all things disturbing, twisted, and terrifying and takes enormous pleasure in creeping out her coworkers. When she's not at work, she's at home watching the Cubs with her cats and her cardigan collection. Other hobbies include scrapbooking, introducing more readers to the Church of Tana French, and convincing her husband that she can, in fact, fit more books onto her shelves. Twitter: @kt_librarylady

Here are all the literary links librarians should know about this week!

Collection Development Corner

Publishing News

Penguin Random House pairs with Ford to publish the brand’s first children’s books.

New & Upcoming Titles

Meghan Markle is allegedly planning on publishing a tell-all memoir.

Carley Fortune announces her next novel, One Golden Summer.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has a book coming out next winter.

A first look at Jodi Picoult’s next novel, By Any Other Name.

Here’s the cover of Ada Limón’s children’s book And, Too, the Fox.

Upcoming fall fiction to help you take a break from election news.

20 books to read before the summer ends.

Weekly picks from Crime Reads, LitHub, New York Times, Parade.

What Your Patrons Are Hearing About

Billionaire, Nerd, Savior, King: Bill Gates and His Quest to Shape Our World – Anupreeta Das (Guardian, Washington Post)

The Hypocrite – Jo Hamya (New York Times, Washington Post)

On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything – Nate Silver (Guardian, New York Times)

RA/Genre Resources

The trope of the “crazy” female protagonist.

Mothers in horror, and the horror they represent.

The essential Shel Silverstein.

Where to start reading V.E. Schwab.

On the Riot

The best new weekly releases to TBR, as well as the best LGBTQ+ weekly releases.

The best book titles of 2024, according to Goodreads.

All Things Comics

Manga marked an $800 million loss from piracy in a single month.

Audiophilia

Audiobooks to offer political context to the Democratic National Convention.

3 audiobooks that emphasize the importance of getting accents right.

Book Lists, Book Lists, Book Lists

Children/Teens

Readalikes for The Summer I Turned Pretty.

The best back-to-school books.

Adults

8 short novels your book club will actually read.

20 memoirs written by Olympians.

6 enchanting retellings of Beauty and the Beast.

On the Riot

12 of the funniest fantasy and science fiction novels.

8 books that take place in libraries.

The best historical fiction set in Nigeria.

8 beautiful BIPOC family sagas to lose yourself in.

9 scary supernatural mysteries.

8 thought-provoking books that explore the possibilities.

8 of the best short books to read this summer.

Level Up (Library Reads)

Do you take part in Library Reads, the monthly list of best books selected by librarians only? We’ve made it easy for you to find eligible diverse titles to nominate. Kelly Jensen has a guide to discovering upcoming diverse books, and Edelweiss has a new catalog dedicated to diverse titles, which is managed by Early Word Galley Chatter Vicki Nesting. Check it out!

And Here’s a Cat Wildlife Photo!

a large male moose standing in foliage

This batch of library news is brought to you live from Alaska! As of this newsletter writing, we’ve seen a moose, a bear (my first 100% certain bear sighting!!), a pair of sea otters, a bald eagle, and a buoy of sea lions! We’ve also missed a mama moose & her calf, and a bear on two separate occasions by mere minutes…hopefully this just means our next wildlife sighting is just around the next corner!

We barely had to zoom in to take this photo — that is a huge male moose standing 20 feet away from the trail we were hiking! He couldn’t have cared less about the crowd of people grouped around him, and we got to watch him for about 10 minutes while he munched his way through the foliage!

All right, friends. I’ll be back on Friday! Have a great week!

—Katie McLain Horner, @kt_librarylady on Twitter.