A little light reading

The Best American Essays 2010, as edited by Christopher Hitchens - many of those essays can be found online. Warm up your office's printer.

Updated lineup

Here is the latest rotation schedule of book picks.

Feb. 21, 2011 – Ed - Corrag

April 4, 2011 – Kristin

May 16, 2011 – Matt

June 27, 2011 – Roni

August 8, 2011 – Lee

September 19, 2011 – Bev

October 24, 2011 – Reggie

December 5, 2011 – Paula

Being in love means never having to say you're sorry

Want to know what books were topping the bestseller list the week you were born? Of course you do.
In my case, it was "Love Story" and "The Crystal Cave" for fiction and "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex" topping nonfiction, with "The Sensuous Woman" behind it. Rrrrracy!

My is for Mystery Readers

Some interesting tidbits on mystery readers that I got in my inbox at work:


Lawrence, KS -- Sisters In Crime (SinC), an organization created to support the professional development and advancement of women crime fiction writers, today released the results of a collaborative study on the mystery book buyer.

The survey, the first of its kind, provides an overview of the mystery/crime fiction book-buying landscape, with information on who buys mystery books, where they buy them, what they buy and why they make their mystery book purchases. The research is based on publishing industry data gathered and interpreted by the PubTrack book sales analysis division of Bowker, a unit that specializes in providing business intelligence to publishers, retailers and authors – with input from a Sisters in Crime survey team.

“The mystery reader survey was created initially to help SinC members make good business decisions when crafting their own business strategies,” said mystery author Cathy Pickens, President of Sisters in Crime. “We are very pleased to announce today that the survey results are available to everyone in the mystery/crime fiction community.”

Among the findings of the study:

The majority of mystery/crime fiction buyers tend to be women over the age of 45 who live in suburbs in the South and West of the United States. Overall, 68 percent of mysteries are purchased by woman; 66 percent of mystery buyers are more than 45 years of age. Buyers 18 to 44 years of age purchase 31 percent of the mysteries sold.

Most of the mystery buyers – 48 percent – live in suburban areas, 27 percent reside in rural areas and 25 percent live in urban areas. The majority of mysteries – 35 percent – are purchased by individuals who live in the South, 26 percent are purchased by people in the West, 20 percent by those in the Midwest and 19 percent by individuals in the Northeast.

Mysteries are obtained mostly through purchases from brick and mortar stores, followed by library borrowing and online purchasing. A total of 39 percent are obtained through in-store purchases, around 20 percent are borrowed from libraries and 17 percent are purchased online. Online purchases in the mystery genre top those for other types of fiction.

As expected, ebooks continue to play a growing role in mystery book purchases. In 2009, ebooks accounted for 1.7 percent of all book sales units. In the second quarter of 2010, this number increased to seven percent; sales of hardcover mystery books declined by nearly the same amount between Q1 and Q2 of 2010.

The number one factor that determined how mystery readers became aware of books was found to be knowing/liking an author – making author “branding” even more important than conventional wisdom suggests. The next four factors, in order of influence were: that the book was part of a series, an in-store display/on shelf/spinning rack, a book-buying club such as the Book of the Month Club or the Mystery Guild and the recommendation of a friend or relative.

Just as authors have always thought, a book’s cover was found to play a significant role in the decision to purchase a mystery. In a list of 27 “media” categories influencing an individual to buy a book, the cover ranked number two in terms of having both a “high influence” and “some influence” on a purchase decision. A total of 57 percent of respondents said the cover had “some influence” on their decision, while 18 percent of respondents said the cover had a “high influence.”

The complete 47-page report, titled “The Mystery Book Consumer in the Digital Age,” is available online at www.sistersincrime.org.

Sisters in Crime (SinC) is an international organization founded in 1986 to promote the professional development and advancement of women crime writers. Today, the organization is made up of more than 3,000 members in 48 chapters worldwide—authors, readers, publishers, agents, booksellers, librarians, and others who love mysteries. Sisters in Crime is online at www.sistersincrime.org.

Other Books

In between reading True Grit, listening to True Grit and watching both True Grit films. I have been stealing some time to go back and reread my favorite Anne Rice novel, The Witching Hour. I'm only about 75 pages in, so I can't say too much about how this read compares with my first reading which was back in the summer of 1991. The book was a present from a college friend - a fellow English major and a guy I had a huge unrequited crush on - because we had often discussed how much we enjoyed Rice's other works. At that time I was especially enthralled by her intricate prose style and the trademark sensuality in her novels. It will be interesting to see how I feel about The Witching Hour 20 years later.