Waiting Lists

Even though I read like a beastie, I confess that I don’t lunge for the bestselling non-fiction as fast as I should. I order it for the library, and then at the end of the year when all the ‘Best of’ lists come out, I end up behind. Part of the reason for this is that I’m not huge on memoir or biography, the most popular type of non-fiction. Another factor is that I don’t want my public waiting to get any book because of me if it can be helped. It’s not like there’s a lack of reading material either. Truth be told, there is also a bit of the “I’ll get around to it later” syndrome at work here. I do eventually get to it, though, and such was the case today.

All of this is a lead-up to telling you about the wildly praised Freakonomics, by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. This book was not only a bestseller in 2005, it had critical acclaim as well. And with reason. It’s damn good. The economist behind the book (Levitt) examines different phenomena like drops in crime rates, and fetters out explanations, often dispelling conventional wisdom in the process. If you liked The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell, then this is for you. It’s just one of those cool books that reads like a breeze but is very intelligent. On top of that, you can glean great factoids and answers to questions you never knew you had. And it’s relatively short too. What more could you ask for?

All the books I’ll be reading this weekend are on hold in my library, if you want a unifying theme. The waiting list snuck up on me while I was away and then sick, so I have to get a move on and bring them back. There’s always a fine balance for people who work in libraries. On one hand, you want to get the material to the public as fast as possible and keep lists moving. On the other hand, if you’ve read the book, you can confidently discuss it with the public and promote it if it’s any good.

People assume that if you’re a librarian, you’ve read everything or at least have heard of it. Obviously, that’s impossible, but it doesn’t hurt to try.

Talk to you tomorrow.

Comments

[Aria]

Thats why I'm thankful to be an academic librarian - theres a little more focus on the "knowing how to find" information, rather than knowing information (and certainly not being expected to have read bestseller lists - which is good because I have almost never read ANYTHING that happened to be on a bestseller list, LOL!)

[Kate]

In the vein of non-fiction books for the"public intellectual", Pulse by Robert Frenay is one to add to the list. It's about "the coming era of systems and machines inspired by living things", and was just released on April 10.

If you dont have time to get through the 400+ page print version, you can visit the website www.pulsethebook.com and have the online serial version sent to your email box or RSS reader. So you can read 3 - 5 pages of Pulse each day over a period of 6 months, completely for free.