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RUSA Names The Best of the Best

The Reference and User Services Association division of the American Library Association has named its picks for the most outstanding contributions to genre fiction this year (here’s a link to the entire list, in case you’re interested). Below you’ll se the choice for the horror genre, some read-alikes, and the short list– those books that came close. Congratulations to all!

RUSA’s choice for most outstanding contribution to the horror genre in 2013 is…

The Ritual by Adam Nevill
Summary: In the remote forests of Sweden, the friendship between four men disintegrates when they wander off the hiking trail and find themselves stalked by an unseen and increasingly violent menace. “Blair Witch” meets black metal in this dark and suspenseful horror novel.

 

Read-alikes
The Ruins by Scott Smith
Deliverance by James Dickey
Neverland by Douglas Clegg

Short List
Breed by Chase Novak (Mullholland Books, 9780316198561)
The Haunting of Maddy Clare by Simone St. James (New American Library, 9780451235688)
This Book is Full of Spiders: Seriously Dude, Don’t Touch It by David Wong (St. Martin’s Press, 9780312546342)
The Return Man by V. M. Zito (Orbit, 9780316218283)

 

So what do you think? Do you agree? What is the most outstanding contribution to horror fiction for 2013?

Posted on December 6, 2013 by , Reply

YA Fiction: Too Many Girls?

It’s common to hear that the reason boys don’t read is because they don’t want to read “girl books”, and that there is a tilt in publishing, writing, and marketing toward books for girls and by women. In fact, there is a book published by the American Library Association called Connecting Boys with Books (a second edition was published in 2009) which makes the argument that boys are drawn to “boys’ books” and specific genres, and that libraries need to make special efforts to meet those needs in order to close the literacy gap. Ana at Lady Business has written a very interesting (and very long) post called Gender Balance in YA Fiction. What’s great about this is that, while it isn’t comprehensive, it’s grounded in solid data, and provides a list of further reading at the end.

What Ana did was look at the award winners from 22 book awards that include YA fiction and categorize the books according to the gender of the protagonist(s) and the gender of the author(s), and draw some conclusions based on that. From her data it looks like there are more male protagonists than female protagonists in YA fiction award winners, which is pretty interesting. And there are more female authors in YA award winners than there are males. But Ana suggests that the difference in percentages is not enough to be significant (She also broke down the data for specific awards and THAT is pretty interesting, if you want to look at it).

Ana’s research doesn’t mean that there isn’t a literacy gap, or that boys aren’t reading predominantly “boys’books”. But the assumption that this is because there aren’t enough male protagonists in YA fiction, or males writing it, clearly deserves more examination. Ana says she addressed the question of whether interests are gendered in her MA thesis, and her research showed it didn’t. I think that’s true(although obviously my experiences are anecdotal). One reason this site was started was to provide choices that could attract reluctant readers, who are frequently boys… but I have encountered so many girls and women who love scary books and horror fiction that I don’t think horror can be described as a gendered interest (although I’d love to see statistics on the readership of horror fiction). And I have also helped boys find cookbooks, animal books, drawing books. and fairytales. To me, it suggests that this is a social issue, and a difficult one. How can we(and by we I mean everybody) get boys to read all kinds of books, and respect and encourage their interests, whatever they are? That, I think, is the question.

Ana did not include the YA category from the Stoker Awards in her analysis, She has said she’s open to including information on other YA awards. It would be great if someone from the HWA could provide her with the information, which could help inform her research.

Posted on October 10, 2012 by , Reply

Is Any Book A Good Book?

Well, the answer to that question is obvious, I think. Of course not. Some books are just not very good. As a review site, of course we discriminate between what makes a story worth reading, and what doesn’t. Otherwise, what good would we be as a resource for readers and librarians? We all have limited time and money for books.

But MonsterLibrarian.com is just that. A resource. People see what we have to say and make their own choices based on that, and probably also recommendations from friends, colleagues, Goodreads, and other review sites, advertisements on the Internet, catalogs and flyers in your mailbox (if you’re a librarian) and reviews in magazines and publications of various kinds. You choose where you’ll go for recommendations, and who you’ll trust to direct you to the “next good book” as we like to say here. I hope you choose to come here and take advantage of our hard work.

To go a little further, is any book that gets people reading a “good book”? I think Dylan, the Monster Librarian, would say yes. And this is a philosophy that I see a lot. Are the Twilight books good books? They got a lot of people reading. That’s a good thing… but are they good books? I think the writing is pretty bad, so I’m going to say no, I don’t think they are. Would I buy them for my YA collection, if I were buying for one? With such high demand, you’ve gotta give them what they want. You don’t take books out of the hands of people who are desperate to read them, especially if this is the first time they’ve ever really wanted to read a book. And I do know people for whom Twilight was the first book they read from cover to cover. But not the last.

I don’t especially like the school of thought that says “well, it’s okay to let them get the bug with R.L. Stine, because at least they’re reading, and that will transfer into a love of great literature in the future”. Maybe, but that’s condescending to those kids. Stine doesn’t even pretend that his books have classic literary value. Like a lot of series books, his books use fairly simple language, predictable structure, and cliffhangers at the endings of chapters to keep kids going. Not everything kids read is great literature, even in the classroom. If you have seen some of the little phonics readers kids use you know that is not even expected. “I put my hat in the van. I put the map in the van. Dad gets in the van”. Simple language, predictable structure (no cliffhangers, though, sadly). We can share the cool books that aren’t Goosebumps or Twilight without seeing them as just a stepping stone. They’re where the reader IS. And maybe the reader will be there for a long time. There are enough Goosebumps books and knockoffs to last the kid who wants them or needs them for a very long time.

But there are also a lot of other books– fiction, nonfiction, and graphic novels for kids that are funny and suspenseful and unbelievable. And someday kids will be done with Goosebumps, just like kids from 30 years ago eventually outgrew the series adventures of Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield and kids from 60 years ago eventually outgrew Nancy Drew to go on to other kinds of books. Maybe their interests will take them in the direction of new, similar series and genre fiction(which is often, despite its disreputable status in literary circles, extremely good) and maybe their reading will be shaped by other interests and experiences. Some of those books might be food for thought– but maybe not the ones we might expect. And some may be pure escapism (also maybe not the ones we might expect).

Not every book is a good book. But sometimes it’s enough to tell a good story, one that fits readers at their particular time and place. But those books don’t exist in isolation, even if the reader has a narrow view. Put those stories in the midst of many, and let serendipity take us on its meandering course on the shelves and through the stacks, whether that’s in the classroom, in the library, or at home.

Posted on September 19, 2012 by , Reply
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