Oct
2014

Capers and Heists: The Movies

categories: Featured Blend, Films

Although I love traditional mysteries with their law abiding, law enforcing heroes and heroines, I admit to having a soft spot for the crime stories that flip the hero paradigm around and put the law breakers into the spotlight.  Still under the umbrella of crime fiction, these stories focus on the successful achievement of a criminal undertaking rather than preventing a crime or catching the criminal.  Charming rogues, loveable rulebreakers, and morally ambiguous anti-heroes are my catnip.  In both capers and heists, much of the appeal is related to characters.  You have to like these characters (or at least be interested by them) in order to follow them to the dark side.  It helps that the characters in a caper or heist is often funny and smarter than everyone around them.  The other big appeal is plot, of course, as they tend to be intricately planned schemes that reward careful attention and showcase the clever ingenuity of the lawbreakers.   Two overlapping stories that explore stories that flirt with (or fully embrace) the criminal side of the mystery line are capers and heist stories. (more…)


Oct
2014

Horror for Beginners

categories: Featured Blend

I am sure there are many readers who would swear on a stack on bibles that they don’t read horror, but who might read certain horror that sneaks onto the bestseller lists or gets literary love.  I thought, in honor of Halloween and All Hallow’s Read (you know– the super-fantastic tradition that Neil Gaiman invented where everyone gives someone a scary book for Halloween?), I would highlight some books that are fantastic horror novels that for one reason or another are read far beyond the normal genre audience for horror.  Sometimes these are books by well-respected literary novelists who are dabbling in a darker hue; sometimes they are subtle horror novels that skirts the edges of the genre. They might be as scary as anything Stephen King ever penned, but they sit on our “literature” shelves rather than in the horror ghetto.  These scary books have gotten a lot of critical love and might be just the thing to give someone who doesn’t think they read horror. (more…)


Oct
2014

New Fall TV Genre Benders

categories: TV

As a break from all the books, I thought I would round-up some of the new TV shows this fall that combine genres.  In my book The Readers’ Advisory Guide to Genre Blends, I have a whole chapter on blends in other formats, including lots of great examples of blends on TV. As a readers’ advisory librarian, asking what TV shows a person likes is a great icebreaker for working with readers not used to articulating what kinds of books they like to read.  Folks who like genre blending in their TV might also like it in books, movies, comics, etc. But increasingly, librarians need to be comfortable helping people not only find books to read, but should also be prepared to help patrons find TV and movies they might like in our DVD collections. It might not be cool in the book world to admit you like TV, but I am unabashedly fond of a lot of shows on TV these day. TV can be a great medium for genre blending, as the episodic nature of the format gives creators lots of opportunities to play with different storytelling styles. So I watch a lot of TV, in between all the book reading, and these are my picks for new shows that are doing interesting things with genre.

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Oct
2014

The Troupe by Robert Jackson Bennett

categories: Review

troupe

FANTASY/HORROR/HISTORICAL FICTION

TITLE: The Troupe
AUTHOR: Robert Jackson Bennett
PUBLISHER: Orbit, 2011

THE BOOK: In an undefined turn-of-the-last-century time when vaudeville was still going strong, we meet young George Carole, a piano player at a small Vaudeville theatre in the middle of America somewhere/nowhere. Sixteen-year-old George is working at Otterman’s theatre for only one reason:  he hopes his father will play there someday so he can finally meet the man. But when he does finally track down his father’s vaudevillian troupe, nothing goes as planned.  His father, Hieronymus Silenus, is involved in something bigger and scarier than a simple entertainment and when George see the Silenus troupe play, his life is changed forever. Between the creepy puppet act, the tantalising dancing of the beautiful Colette, and the mesmerizing song that ends the act, George is fascinated.  But it is his encounter after the show with a spooky gray man who sucks all the light out of the world around him that decides George to sign on with the Troupe. Because Silenus is somehow using his show to battle back all the evil of the world.  Or is he? (more…)


Oct
2014

Hot Books for Santa Ana Days

categories: Featured Microgenre

While the rest of the country is enjoying crisp fall days, colorful foliage, and excellent sleeping weather, Southern California had Santa Ana winds blowing through over the weekend. If you’ve never heard of the Santa Ana winds, they are supposed to drive people a little crazy.  Raymond Chandler has a typically awesome quote:

“There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Ana’s that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands’ necks. Anything can happen. “

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Oct
2014

Urban Fantasy versus Paranormal Romance

categories: Featured Blend, infographic

pnrufchart2

(click to embiggen!)

Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance.  There seems to be lots of people who love one but not the other.  In most classification schemes and in my book (The Readers’ Advisory Guide to Genre Blends), urban fantasy is technically a subgenre of fantasy, and paranormal romance is a subgenre of romance (just as the names imply!), but the reading reality has always seemed more fluid to me. I read a lot of series that fall under one or another of those subgenre headings, and I’ve never been particularly fussy about what label gets printed on the spine.  When I was in charge of ordering paperbacks for a library, I was forced to care about this issue, as I would be the one that would decide whether a book went on the “ROMANCE” spinner or the “SF/FANTASY” spinner. And believe it or not I found  it surprisingly difficult at times.  Sometimes I would violently disagree with the way the publisher had chosen to market a series. Maybe it was a book that had a cover and a subject heading that screamed romance and I thought it would appeal as much (or more) to fantasy fans.  Maybe the book was all moody urban fantasy on the outside but all steamy romance between the covers.  It was then that I started to think about these books all living on more of a spectrum: all books that shared a real-world, present day fantasy landscape and almost always included a crime/puzzle/mystery plot line. The difference was simply in the amount of romance.

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Sep
2014

Readers’ Advsiory Guide to Genre Blends

categories: New Releases


I am happy to announce the publication of my new book, The Readers’ Advisory Guide to Genre Blends, officially coming out from ALA Editions tomorrow, October 1 (although it’s been  available and shipping from booksellers for a couple of weeks).  The book is part of a wonderful series edited by Joyce Saricks and Neal Wyatt, which usually focus on a particular genre or format and give in-depth advice for librarians engaged in serving readers.  My volume is a little different, as it covers not one genre but all of them, analyzing the books that blend genres together. (more…)


Sep
2014

Genre Blend New Releases for October 2014

categories: New Releases

Every month there is another batch of new books that don’t fit neatly into one genre. Here are some of the genreblended books coming out in October 2014.  Usually there is a bias towards books with a SF, Fantasy or Horror element, but this month these is also a bonaza of romance coming out, especially regencies. Genres are listed in my best estimation as to the order of prominence to the story. For example, if the first genre listed is SF, that is probably the first audience for the book. What are you most looking foward to?

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Sep
2014

Banned Books Week

categories: Uncategorized

banned venn

 

This is one of those things that isn’t true, but feels true. If someone thinks a book is the best book every written, there is someone who wants it banned from schools and libraries.  If there is a book that has been banned, it is someone’s favorite book of all time.

Because it is Banned Books Week, and as I librarian I’ve always loved this annual time when we celebrate the freedom to read, I was checking over the list of most banned and/or challenged books.  ALA has a lot of nice resources on their banned books week site including a list of the 100 books most challenged in the first decade of the 21st century.  In other words, RECENTLY.  And as usual, it makes me so sad that there are so many marvelous books that people want to surpress.  I grew up in a house full of books where I was allowed to read anything I wanted, whether it was appropriate for my age or not.  I WAS NOT HARMED.  I’m a (mostly) well-adjusted functioning member of society.  No book ever hurt me or scarred me. So yeah, I think banning books is just about the most pointless thing a person can do with their time and energy. (more…)


Sep
2014

GIVEAWAY: The Witch With No Name by Kim Harrison

categories: Giveaway

witchwithnonameI am a lucky, lucky girl.  As part of my work reviewing for Library Journal, I get a lot of books sent to me.  As much as I would love to keep them all, I don’t live in a TARDIS. So I’ve decide that occasionally I will cull the shelves and give away some books to readers of the site. Sometimes they will probably be galleys, but I thought I would kick things off with a lovely, pristine finished copy.  The Witch with No Name is the 13th and last book in Kim Harrison’s fantastic Hollows series.

Fans of the series have been following Rachel Morgan since she first stormed out of Inderland Security with a bounty on her head in Dead Witch Walking and they will be anxious to see how it all ends for Rachel, Ivy, Jenks and Trent.  Although the proportions vary from book to book, the series is a blend of fantasy, mystery and romance. Author Harrison had a lot of loose ends to tie up after playing in the same universe for 13 books and she does a good job of giving long-time readers satisfying answers. With all the humor and heart fans expect, as well as high-stakes action, this is a great end to one of the best series in urban fantasy. I reviewed it over at Library Journal in the August 15 issue.

My thanks go out to HarperCollins, who sent me the book.  If you would like to enter to win this book, just be sure to leave comment by Friday, September 26 and I will use a randomly pick a winner.  Since I’ll be mailing this out myself, this giveaway is limited to the U.S.