Sunday, June 29, 2014
8:30– 10am
Las Vegas Convention Center
Room N111
Seating is limited, so RSVP to librarylovefest@harpercollins.com today!
See you there!
Yannick Murphy is the award-winning author of The Call. Her latest book, This is the Water (on sale 7/29) is a fast-paced story of murder, adultery, and parenthood involving a swim team of teenage girls, their morally flawed parents, and a killer who swims in their midst.
Today on LLF, Yannick talks about her extensive love and experience with libraries:
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I grew up in New York City, in Greenwich Village, and my local library was the historic Jefferson Market Library. Styled using gothic architecture, complete with a clock tower, and stained glass windows, it used to be an old courthouse, but in my mind it was as magical as a castle. It had wide stone stairs whose steps spiraled to the upper floors, that I spent many an afternoon running up and down and testing out my voice, and listening for an echo, that when it came back to me was, for some reason, so reassuring.
There was the reference room in the basement, which used to be a holding room for inmates. I can remember my sisters and I daring each other to go down to that dark section, and then scaring each other by running down the stairs to where the sister was who had accepted the dare and screaming at the top of our lungs.
Best of all, though, it had a great collection of children’s books, and I would imagine that beautiful library had a lot to do with my fondness for books and my eventual love of writing.
As I grew older, I volunteered in my school libraries. I would arrive early, before school started, just so I could help process new books and shelve books. In college, I also worked at the library. I remember going for the job, and the head librarian said that I first had to take a shelving test. He gave me thirty or so cards, and asked that I put them in correct Dewey Decimal order. He then said to come into his office and tell him when I was done.
He left, and closed his office door while I sat at a library table with the cards in front of me. I started wondering how once I finished all the cards that he would check all of the cards to see that I put them in the right order. I figured that if I were him, I would just write on the back of the cards the numbers 1-30, so that I could easily check if the test taker had ordered them correctly. I turned over the cards. Sure enough, on each of them, in the corner, written in faint pencil mark, was a number. I put them all in order in a matter of seconds, then I went and knocked on his office door.
“I’m done,” I said. “What? So fast?” he said. “That’s impossible,” he said.
I couldn’t help myself. I had to tell him that I had discovered his method for checking that the cards were in the correct order.
“In all of my fifteen years as a librarian I have been using these same cards to test students for this library job, and you are the first person who has ever thought to check the back of the cards.” “Good, so I’m hired,” I said. “Not just yet,” he said.
He gave me a set of new cards that had no numbers on the backs of them, that I had to put in the correct order. Doing that took me some time, but it also took him some time to correct them.
Eight years ago, when we moved to Vermont, I took a job teaching library in the local elementary school. This was a great job, as there is nothing more enjoyable that reading books to little kids. Some of my favorite books to read to them was “Are You My Mother?” and “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” because when reading the parts of the baby bird or the baby bear I would use this strange voice that sounded like a child with a New York accent who had just inhaled helium.
Where else can you emit such an awful sound and have a rapt audience at the same time? Teaching library was a blast, but then the school decided that it needed the library room as a classroom, and the book shelves were cleared out, and stuck into the hallway, and scattered through out the building, and Library is no longer taught at the school, and students no longer take out books. What a shame! What has the world come to? I thought, but of course there is no answer to that question.
Our small town libraries are precious to me. In my book “This is the Water” I mention how the town that the main character lives in is wonderful and safe, and I state how the librarian of the one room library keeps a barrel full of oyster crackers in the library, free for the taking, and how he’ll even deliver a book you’ve put on hold to your house if it’s on his way. This is a true part of my novel!
Some of the other local libraries we use even call us to remind us when our book is overdue and when our book on hold has arrived. The libraries are all small; they don’t even have a detector at the exit, whose alarm would sound if you walked out of the library without checking out a book. The nicest, sweetest, retired women work at the front desk, who are extremely slow at checking out books, and I swear, I have only ever once, being very late to pick up my kids, walked out of the library with a book that I didn’t check out. And yes, I did return the book a week later. But shh, please don’t tell. I will never, ever do it again. The guilt is too much!
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Thank you, Yannick. Be sure to download an egalley of This is the Water on Edelweiss.
– Annie
Anyone who knows anything about women’s basketball knows about Brittney Griner. Selected as the #1 draft pick in the WNBA in 2013, and holding the record for top shot-blocker ever (in both the men and women’s game), the dunk-happy Griner is said to have fundamentally changed college basketball more than any other player in history. Griner is equally famous for making headlines off the court, as she did when she publicly acknowledged she is gay in a Sports Illustrated interview last April. She’s also been instrumental in leading the nation’s dialog on issues like femininity, body image, and more. Griner’s personal memoir In My Skin explores the highs and lows of her life, the bullying she endured, and the assumptions she has redefined, as well as her passion for the game, and empowers readers to be true to themselves and love who they are on the inside and out.
This moving and inspirational memoir went on sale earlier this month and has already been raved about by Out Magazine, BET, The Huffington Post, and Slate. In My Skin is an excellent addition to any library for teens, LGBT audiences, and general sports fans.
-Amanda
Gabriel García Márquez, Nobel Prize-winning author of the beloved One Hundred Years of Solitude, passed away yesterday. Known for popularizing the magical realism style of writing, Gabriel wrote numerous novels and short stories that ensnared our imaginations and opened our eyes to the culture and history of his native Colombia. I don’t know how many times I read “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” for classes throughout high school and college, but each time there was something new to be noticed and enjoyed. He will definitely live on as one of the greatest writers of our time.
The Girl Who Came Home by Hazel Gaynor is a terrific read. One of my faves on the list. Why? Because I know the fate of Titanic. Everyone does. Yet, I defy you to stop turning the pages on this one. It’s historical fiction at its very best, switching between 1912 and 1982 and blending fact and fiction so beautifully. It’s a story of family, love and survival. At the heart of this novel is the true story of 14 people from a small town in Ireland who board Titanic in hopes of a better life in America. Of those 14, only 3 survive. This has a real ‘you are there’ feeling. The ship suddenly shakes and vibrates. Water starts to slowly appear on the floors of the cabins. There is concern but the overall mood is still light hearted. The ship is unsinkable…right? Time elapses. The ship takes on more water and begins to list. The mood shifts. Tension climbs.
It’s a terrific, gripping, harrowing read with wonderfully drawn characters – past and present. Two thumbs up. I loved it.
-Virginia
For more information on the story behind the story, check out this link on the author’s website.
It’s National Library Week, and our hearts are full! So full that we’d like to share some love with our LibraryLoveFest readers…in addition to a well-deserving library.
So, check out these really cool library purses. Want to win one? Send a selfie of you and/or your staff in front of your library to us at librarylovefest@harpercollins.com. We’ll randomly select 10 winners to receive one of these swanky Out of Print pouches. At the end of the week, we’ll post all the fun photos we receive here on LibraryLoveFest.
AND…if you want to help out a fellow library, check out some other cool book-related swag! For this week only, Out of Print is donating a portion of their sales to P.S. 244 in Queens, NY to purchase a scanning system for their library!
-Virginia
I am SUPER excited to announce the May LibraryReads picks because they are two of my favorites this year. The Bees by Laline Paull and Bird Box by Josh Malerman. Both books are so excellent in very different ways.
The Handmaid's Tale meets The Hunger Games in The Bees, when devout, little, worker bee, Flora 717, finds herself in possession of a deadly secret and becomes a hunted criminal whose decisions will mean life and death for her entire hive.
Bird Box is a seriously creepy and deliciously imaginative story of a mother and her two small children who must make their way down a river, blindfolded. And something is after them – but is it man, animal or monster? Eek!
Get your copies now – CAUSE.THEY.ARE.GREAT.
Not participating in LibraryReads? That should be remedied immediately! Here's how.
– Annie
Elizabeth Lowell's latest novel is Night Diver, a tale of adventure that takes place in the deadly world of underwater treasure hunters.
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When I was a child, I was a walking, talking, question mark looking for a place to explode. The library was my ground zero. My queries…endless.
How are crystals made?
How did the earth come to be?
How many kinds of horses are there?
What are all those lights in the sky?
How far away are they?
Why is there night and day?
What is it like to go cave exploring? Scuba diving?
How did people live a thousand years ago? Two thousand?
Have people always been on earth?
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In my opinion, Barbara Hoffert is the queen of the interview, so it was only fitting that she sit down with Erika Johansen, author of The Queen of the Tearling, the first in a new trilogy.
Erika's book has been getting lots of advance praise (including from our own Amanda Rountree), and it is getting made into a movie starring Emma Watson! It is an adventurous saga about an untested young princess who must claim her throne, learn to become a queen, and combat a malevolent sorceress in an epic battle between light and darkness. Dun, dun, dun!
For the entire interview visit our YouTube page, but for now I'll let Barbara guide you along…
An Introduction:
On why we will relate to the characters:
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Barbara Hoffert Interviews Erika Johansen, author of The Queen of the TearlingRead More »
Holly Peterson's latest book, The Idea of Him, just went on sale yesterday, and she wrote a lovely piece on her blog about how NYPL was her safe haven. She's let us republish it here because I think many people can relate to her experiences and find havens at their own local branches.
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The New York Public Library is my safe haven from the cacophony of Manhattan. Bleating horns, bike messengers racing to earn the next pick up, taxis playing chicken with each other, surprise wind tunnels on side streets that butt up against an open field in Central Park and then whip all that vast pent up energy into us up against a wall. My senses are assaulted, I feel grimy, I’m carrying too many research files and a lap top and cord in one bag, a purse in another, and the New York Times is in a deli bag along with a protein bar, muffin and tea that is spilling all over both.
In the midst of this madness, I am a writer seeking calm and a good place to concentrate. There is no book-lined, peaceful study at home overlooking a forest or seascape in my life in the way that I imagine Virginia Wolfe or Leo Tolstoy or the modern John Grisham writing their oeuvres.
Once I’ve battled my way to New York’s famed Forty-Second street and Fifth Avenue, I then sit on the glorious steps of my sanctuary in this urban jungle we call Manhattan: our very own masterpiece oeuvre: the New York Public Library.
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Library Love from Holly Peterson, author of The Idea of HimRead More »
I’m in publishing and y’all are librarians, so I think it’s safe to assume we love books and therefore owe our livelihoods to a Mr. Johannes Gutenberg. In her debut novel Gutenberg’s Apprentice, Alix Christie pulls together the threads of history in an enthralling new tale that explores the story of the first printing press and the lives of the three men who made its existence possible.
Young Peter Schoeffer is on his way to success as a professional scribe in Paris when his foster father, wealthy merchant and bookseller Johann Fust, calls him home to meet Johannes Gutenberg, who has invented a revolutionary way to manufacture books: the printing press. Fust is funding Gutenberg’s workshop and orders Peter to become his apprentice. As Peter’s skills in “the darkest art” grow, so too does his admiration for Gutenberg and their mission to mass produce copies of the Holy Bible. When mechanical difficulties and interference from the Catholic Church threaten their work, tension spreads between the three men as they face seemingly insurmountable obstacles. Together, they must fight for the completion and success of the printing press and the future of books and publishing as we know it today.
Check out this exciting read on Edelweiss (though it does seem kind of ironic to read it electronically).
-Amanda
