Tag: Book reviews

A Year in Reading (2014)

My personal reading for 2014 has been mostly for entertainment. The list is shown in chronological order. My favorite five from the list below are noted with bold text.

  1. Arsenals of Folly: The Making of the Nuclear Arms Race, by Richard Rhodes
  2. The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel, by Neil Gaiman
  3. The Martian, by Andy Weir
  4. Like a Mighty Army (Safehold), by David Weber
  5. Redshirts, by John Scalzi
  6. Bad Monkey, by Carl Hiassen
  7. Old Man’s War, by John Scalzi
  8. 2312, by Kim Stanley Robinson
  9. Trojan Horse: A Novel, by Mark Russinovich
  10. Quarter Share, by Nathan Lowell
  11. Ready Player One: A Novel, by Earnest Cline
  12. A Delicate Truth: A Novel, by John LeCarré
  13. Reamde: A Novel, by Neal Stephenson
  14. Good Faith, by Jane Smiley
  15. Existence, by David Brin
  16. Luna Park, by Kevin Baker
  17. Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore: A Novel, by Robin Sloan
  18. Divergent (Divergent Trilogy, Book 1), by Veronica Roth
  19. Half Share, by Nathan Lowell
  20. LEGO: A Love Story, by Jonathan Bender
  21. World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, by Max Brooks

Reader’s Club: Librarians’ Book Reviews with RSS

Looking for a source of book reviews to put on your library site? Or perhaps just looking for a review of a recently published book? A source I just stumbled on, Reader’s Club, has just that: more than 2000 book reviews written by librarians and library staff at the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County in North Carolina since 1998.
Reviews are categorized by genre. And, the reason this is germane here — every genre has an RSS feed. That’s more than 50 genre-based feeds available through the RSS Feeds Directory. Feeds are limited to books added in the past 45 days, but the complete list of reviews is searchable via the web site.
Whether this is a project to emulate within your own library, or great source of reviews to aid in collection development or to provide patrons, this is a great idea.

[Via The Relevant Library.]