Special Post - Sources for Books

Situation: 

I was asked by friends recently where I find my eclectic assortment of interesting books. They, too, want to identify not just something popular from the list of New York Times Bestsellers. They would like ongoing resources to consistently dangle titles in front of them, books which are quality reads with interesting characters and challenging, funny, or transporting plots. They want something out of the ordinary, something they actually will look forward to picking up and reading. 

 
My Solution:
 

Four years ago I wrote a Special Post - Resources for Finding Great Books, but now need to update the electronic newsletters portion. Below are some free email newsletters chock full of brilliant, quirky, and certainly tempting books that I use to learn about new and old titles. 

 

These free book review lists below may appear daunting in number, but don't worry. You can just skim their postings and book lists as you wish, usually a very quick process for me. 

 

Just give them your email address and sit back to watch your In-box fill up with titles and quality reviews of books soon to be published, currently under the radar, classics from the past, and loads of other book-related articles. It's exciting to have emails come into you life almost daily with enticing books to pursue. I read the first sentences of books that interest me using library copies or through the Amazon "Look Inside" link to the book's first pages. Easy to judge quickly and winnow down to the ones that really interest me by my quirky standards. You can do it too.

 

Happy reading.

Fred 

Click here to browse over 465 more book recommendations by subject or title

(and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader).

 

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Free Book Review Newsletters
(Click on any title to read more and sign up for email postings)

BookBrowse

This newsletter from librarians also provides a longer list of titles with reviews than other book sites, but these books all seem deliciously enticing due to the quality of synopsis and praise they receive. 

 

Booklist

My most-used go-to list to discover top notch list of book recommendations from librarians, often before they are available to the public. Often organized by themes (Thrillers, Non-Fiction, Book Clubs, Romance, etc.). 

Book Marks

Literary Hub's site for book excellent book reviews on a huge variety of topics.

 

BookPage 

Extensive list and reviews from readers as well as some libraries of books they are currently reading. Print copies are usually available in public libraries.

 

The Cottage Bookshop

Probably the newsletter I most look forward to, this monthly posting covers books I usually haven't heard of, yet are always intriguing.

First Look Book Club

Brief excerpts for about-to-be-published books from Random House.

 

Gramercy Books

Have to put in a plug for my local indie bookstore here in Columbus, Ohio, Gramercy Books. Always something interesting to suggest in the way of book titles, gifts, author events, and an overall general good feeling about reading and books.

 

The Guardian Bookmarks

Great reviews of newer books, plus lots of general book-related commentary, articles, links, and discussion. Very good site to stimulate loads of ideas and thoughts.

 

LibraryReads Newsletter

Top ten books of the week that "library staff across the country love." What could be better?

LitHub Weekly 

Very extensive, eclectic, and sophisticated newsletter chock full of articles, essays, book recommendations, and other book-related items. 

 

New York Times Newsletter

Still a great resource for new books, but the newsletter contains many more articles, interviews with authors, and general book-related items.

NPR Books Newsletter  

Fewer book recommendations but great reviews, articles, and comments from NPR readers.

 

Penguin Books Newsletter

From the UK is this unique newsletter reviewing books, offering author interviews, and links to fascinating articles of literary and unusual book-themed nature.

 

RJ Julia Just the Right Book

This tiny but completely well-stocked bookshop in Connecticut is world famous for having a great selection of books. Of course, their newsletter introduces readers to wonderful books and gifts from their store.

Shelf Awareness 

The top twenty-five books of the week as selected by book dealers, publishers, and librarians. Also includes author interviews, games, and links to reviews for unusual books, book-related articles and events of the week. (Sent twice weekly, but isn't overwhelming).

 

Simon & Schuster Books

Extensive list of books from the publisher with high-quality reviews. Also, you get a free e-book when you sign up for this newsletter.  Woo-Hoo!

Vintage Books

A offshoot of Penguin Books, this newsletter offers more obscure books that have proved to be delightful reads for me.

 

The Washington Post Book Club

Lengthy, but not overpowering, list of book recommendations for highly interesting titles, articles, and author interviews. Very well-written in all aspects. Need a subscription to the WP, but I use the newsletter to get ideas of up-and-coming, high-quality books

 

Special Post - Free Email Newletters to Find Great Books

 

Situation: 

I get asked by friends where they can find interesting books, not just not just something popular from the list of New York Times Bestsellers. They need an ongoing resource to consistently dangle titles in front of them, books which are quality reads with interesting characters and challenging, funny, or transporting plots. They want something out of the ordinary, something they will enjoy reading. 

 
My Solution:
 

Six years ago I wrote a Special Post - Resources for Finding Great Books, but now need to update the electronic newsletters portion. Below are some free email newsletters chock full of brilliant, quirky, and certainly tempting books that I use to learn about new and old titles. Just give them your email address and sit back to watch your In-box fill up with tempting titles of books soon to be published, currently under the radar, classics from the past, and loads of other book-related articles. 

Happy reading.

Fred

www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

_______________________________________________

Free Email Book Newsletters
(Click on any title to read more and sign up)

BookBrowse

This newsletter from librarians also provides a longer list of titles with reviews than other book sites, but these books all seem deliciously enticing due to the quality of synopsis and praise they receive.

_______________________________________

The Booklist Corner Shelf

Another librarian-run newsletter, this one is a bit lower key and a lot of fun to read, both for the books they select to review and the writing itself.

_______________________________________

The Cottage Bookshop

Probably the newsletter I most look forward to, this monthly posting covers books I usually haven't heard of, yet are always intriguing.

_______________________________________

 

Gramercy Books

Have to put in a plug for my local indie bookstore here in Columbus, Ohio, Gramercy Books. Always something interesting to suggest in the way of book titles, gifts, author events, and an overall general good feeling about reading and books.

_______________________________________

 

The Guardian Bookmarks

Great reviews of newer books, plus lots of general book-related commentary, articles, links, and discussion. Very good site to stimulate loads of ideas and thoughts

_______________________________________

Libraryreads Newsletter

Top ten books of the week that :library staff across the country love." What could be better?

_______________________________________

LitHub Weekly 

Very extensive, eclectic, and sophisticated newsletter chock full of articles, essays, book recommendations, and other book-related items.

_______________________________________

 

Penguin Books Newsletter
From the UK is this unique newsletter reviewing books, offering author interviews, and links to fascinating articles of literary and unusual book-themed nature.

_______________________________________

RJ Julia Just the Right Book

This tiny but completely well-stocked bookshop in Connecticut is world famous for having a great selection of books. Of course, their newsletter introduces readers to wonderful books and gifts from their store.

_______________________________________

Shelf Awareness

The top twenty-five books of the week as selected by book dealers, publishers, and librarians. Also includes author interviews, games, and links to reviews for unusual books, book-related articles and events of the week. (Sent twice weekly, but isn't overwhelming).

_______________________________________

Vintage Books

A offshoot of Penguin Books, this newsletter offers more obscure books that have proved to be delightful reads for me.

_______________________________________

The Washington Post Bookclub

Lengthy, but not overpowering, list of book recommendations for highly interesting titles, articles, and author interviews. Very well-written in all aspects.

Awake in the Dark

Ebert, Roger. Awake in the Dark: Forty Years of Reviews, Essays, and Interviews. New York: University of Chicago 2006. Print

First Sentences:

I began my work as a film critic in 1967, although one of the pieces in this book goes back to my days on the Daily Illini at the University of Illinois. 

I had not thought to be a film critic, and indeed had few firm career plans apart from vague notions that I might someday be a political columnist of a professor of English. 


Description:

As a lover of films, finding a go-to reviewer is vital to deciding whether a specific movie will be interesting enough to actually spend time and money to see it. For me, such a reviewer needs to have insight, humor, quality writing, and no fear to tell it like the movie is, whether good or bad. Of course, my personal go-to reviewer for many years has been Roger Ebert. 

The task of every movie is to try to change how you feel and think during its running time. That it is not important to have a "good time" but very important not to have your time wasted....A movie is not good because it arrives at conclusions you share, or bad because it does not. A movie is .... about the way it considers its subject matter, 

The best of his writing for the Chicago Sun Times (and a few other outlets) are gathered in

Awake in the Dark. There are 91 reviews here (yes, I counted them), divided into categories of "Interviews and Profiles," "The Best," "Foreign Films," "Documentaries,"  and "Overlooked and Underrated." Ebert includes introductions for each category, along with extra essays on "Think Pieces," writing about film criticism, and even his piece "On the Meaning of Life ...and Movies." 

There is also some autobiographical information on his youth growing up in Champaign-Urbana, sneaking into the only movie theater in town, and his first reviews for the University of Chicago student newspaper. Ebert even throws in some history of moving pictures from the Lumiere brothers and George Melies, to the first film of a train arriving in a Paris station which caused audiences "to dive out of the way." 

To see three movies during a routine workday or thirty movies a week at a film festival is a good job to have.

Artists whom Ebert interviewed range from Warren Beatty to Ingmar Bergman to Meryl Streep to Spike Lee. Awake in the Dark provides Ebert's list of his top ten movies from every year from 1967 - 2005, then offers his review of the Number One movie from his list for each year. These reviews start with Bonnie and Clyde (1967) through Sophie's Choice (1982), to Do the Right Thing (1989), to Crash (2005). 

What makes these insightful reviews so interesting to me is that they were published as the movie was first released. His observations are the first look offered to potential audiences for such films as Five Easy Pieces, Amadeus, Fargo, Being John Malkovich, and Cries and Whispers. It's easy to see a movie years after its release and judge it to be a classic. Ebert is able to recognize a golden film as soon as he views it in the screening room, and shares why he knows it will be a classic for future movie-goers.

If the magical elements in a movie -- story, director, actors -- are assembled for magical reasons -- to delight, to move, to astound -- then something good often results. But when they are assembled simply as a "package," as a formula to suck in the customers, they are good only if a miracle happens.

If you can't find something here you are curious to read Ebert's opinions on, you can't possibly call yourself a film enthusiast. Personally, I loved every review/essay/commentary Ebert included in this fine collection. He introduced me to movies I had never heard of, helped me understand films I didn't get or like the first time I viewed them, and reinforced the good impressions I had for several of my favorite movies.

Pick it up, flip through it to a favorite (or hated) movie and get his insight on what makes that film worthwhile. You won't be sorry.

And by the way, if you are looking for the reviews of movies he didn't like, be sure to read, I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie. Here he again demonstrates his command of words and films to describe the worst of this field in extremely clever, deflating ways. You cannot help but smile at such reviews as:

Dear God is the kind of movie where you walk out repeating the title, but not with a smile.

Happy reading. 

Fred

Other book recommendations
About The First Sentence Reader blog

____________________

If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Kael, Pauline. I Lost It at the Movies.   

One of the definitive voices among film reviewers, Kael wrote for the New Yorker for years. This book compiles some of her best work and captures her discerning, often caustic voice that still reflect her overall love of movies.

What To Read and Why

Prose, Francine. What To Read and Why. New York: HarperCollins 2018. Print

First Sentences:

Reading is among the most private, the most solitary things that we can do.

A book is a kind of refuge to which we can go for the assurance that, as long as we are reading, we can leave the worries and cares of our everyday lives behind us and enter, however briefly, another reality, populated by other lives, a world distant in time and place from our own, or else reflective of the present moment in ways that may help us see that moment more clearly.

Description:

The books I most eagerly and thoroughly enjoy are those that tell me about other books. Whether through an author's personal reading preferences like Book Lust by Nancy Pearl or Joe Queenen's One For the Books, or by recounting personal adventures with books like The Shelf (reading an entire shelf of library books) by Phyllis Rose or The Know-It-All (reading the entire encyclopedia) by A.J. Jacobs, anything that describes and thereby promotes great, interesting books is always my first choice.

What To Read and Why by Francine Prose ably fills the bill for me. She clearly understands the double joy of reading: the solitary time in the author's world and then the sharing of the book's ideas with others. And she suggests that "You've got to read this" are the words that should open every positive book review. She feels the best reviews of recommended books really are telling readers to "Drop everything. Start reading. Now."

Reading and writing are solitary activities, and yet there is a social component that comes into play when we tell someone else about what we have read. An additional pleasure of reading is that you can urge and sometimes even persuade people you know and care about, and even people you don't know, to read the book you've just finished and admired -- and that you think they would like, too. 

In What to Read, each of its thirty-three chapters covers one highly recommended book and author. They range from the more recognized Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and George Eliot's Middlemarch to the lesser-know (at least to me) Roberto Bolano's 2666 and Mark Strand's Mr. and Mrs. Baby. Along the way author Prose covers the lives (briefly) and books by Austen, Alcott, Munro, and Knausgaard, as well as Charles Baxter, Deborah Levy, and Mohsin Hamid, all of whom I was to varying degrees unfamiliar with.

Prose even includes a couple of chapters on related topics such as "On Clarity," "What Makes a Short Story?",  and "On the Erotic and Pornographic." Got your interest yet? Surely there is something to whet anyone's reading appetite in What To Read and Why. 

Here's a writer who clearly loves to read and enthusiastically share her gems will all of us. Now, a few tidbits to get you excited about her recommendations:

• [on "The Collected Stories" of Mavis Gallant]: I feel  kind of messianic zeal, which I share with other writers and readers, to make sure that Gallant's work continues to be read, admired -- and loved....She builds her fictions with moments and incidents so revealing and resonant that another writer might have made each one a separate story....Her fiction has the originality and profundity, the clarity, the breadth of vision, wit, the mystery, the ability to make us feel that a work has found its ideal form, that no one word could be changed, all of which re recognize as being among the great wonders of art.

• [on Patrick Hamilton]: With their intense, and intensely mixed, sympathies for the men and women who haunted the pubs and walked the streets of London's tawdrier districts just before, during, and after World War II, Patrick Hamilton's novels are dark tunnels of misery, loneliness, deceit, and sexual obsession, illuminated by scenes so funny that it takes a while to register the sheer awfulness of what we have just red.

• [on Andrea Canobbio]: Canobbio...avoids the obvious pitfalls, largely as a result of his acuity and inventiveness, of the specificity and density of his detail, the elegance of his style, and the depth of his psychological insight.

• [on Elizabeth Taylor (the author, not the actress)]: The best of her fiction is extremely funny, incisive, sympathetic, and beautifully written, but it can also make us squirm with uneasy recognition and tell us more than we might choose to hear about ourselves and our neighbors. Awful things happen in those narratives, not in the sense of violence and gore but of characters realizing awful truths about the lives in which they are hopelessly mired.

• [on Jane Austen]: No other novelist combined such a subtle, delicate moral sensibility with such a firm, no-nonsense grasp of the most material realities -- of the fact that money determines one's opportunity to live in the tranquil and gracious style to which one is (or would like to be) accustomed.

• [on Stanley Elkin]: Stanley was not only a maximalist of language, but also one of truth....That was one of the most astonishing and special qualities of his work: that piling on more and more -- more metaphors, more world, more sentences, more humor, more energy -- as a way of delving into, bringing to light, and forcing us to look directly into the heart of the simultaneously dark and scintillating mystery of what makes us human. 

Well, you get the idea. Francine Prose is a gifted writer herself, willing to read widely, analyze the importance of great writing, and share her loves with us. No one could pick up What To Read and Why without finding something unexpected and alluring, an author, title or review, that will make them immediately go into a bookstore, library, or online to obtain a copy of this new treasure. Highly recommended. 

Happy reading. 

Fred

Other book recommendations
About The First Sentence Reader blog

____________________

If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Pearl, Nancy. Book Lust.   

Absolutely the best, most compelling, delightful reviews of hundreds of recommended titles from the head librarian of the Seattle Public Library. Irresistible, and best of all Pearl has several other Book Lust titles available for travel, teens, etc. (previously reviewed here)

The Year of Reading Dangerously

Miller, Andy. The Year of Reading Dangerously: How Fifty Great Books (and Two Not-So-Great Ones) Saved My Life. New York: Harper. 2014. Print.

First Sentences:

My life is nothing special. It is every bit as dreary as yours.

Description:

I just love books about books. That's just all there is too it. And what's not to like? Such books contain lists of recommended books, commentary by a clever reader, and back stories behind choices, disappointments, and treasures. Humor writer Andy Miller in his The Year of Reading Dangerously: How Fifty Great Books (and Two Not-So-Great Ones) Saved My Life delivers on all levels.

He documents the year he decided to read fifty books, "some of the greatest and most famous books in the world, and two by Dan Brown." These are books he had avoided throughout his life, not necessarily the best books ever written. His list is whimsical, ranging from Middlemarch to The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, from On The Road to I Capture the Castle.

For each book, Miller writes a story. A ranging, funny, serious stream of consciousness evaluation of what the book has brought to his life. His comments meander into movies, songs, personal letters to authors, libraries, and his own life.

Just having access to the list of his books he read and the bonus list of the books that influenced him in these choices (included conveniently in the Appendices), made the book a valuable treasure map for me. 

Eclectic, fun, and insightful commentary on every page. It introduced me to many books I'd never even heard of and provided new interpretations over the ones I actually had read. Highly recommended for any book-lover seeking new titles and anyone else who appreciates cleverness in writing style and topics. 

Happy reading. 


Fred

Other book recommendations
About The First Sentence Reader blog

____________________

If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Walton, Jo. What Makes This Book So Great? Rereading the Classics of Science Fiction and Fantasy

Over 130 essays on older, sometimes fogotten or overlooked science fiction and fantasy books. Walton writes with a passion and intellect for this genre, so uncovers many titles that sound tempting to plunge into yourself. (Previously reviewed here).

Queenan, Joe. One for the Books:

A voracious reader who sometimes is reading 15 books at the same time. His reviews are insightful, his titles pursued extensive, and his stories about reading, people, and books are wonderful. A must read for anyone who loves books. (Previously reviewed here)

A Reader's Book of Days

Nissley, Tom. A Reader's Book of Days: True Tales from the Lives and Works of Writers for Every Day of the Year. New York: Norton. 2013. Print.

First Sentences:

January

You'd think more books would start in January. Does it not feel original enough to open a story with the new year? Or do we find more natural beginnings in the spring or when we return to work or school after the summer? What, after all, is born in the dead month of January besides a calendar?

Description:

Ever wonder which literary figures were born or died on a particular day? Curious about references to events in literature or real life that happened on specific days? Ever want quotes from books about characters thoughts on certain dates?

Yeah, me neither. Just bring on the books they wrote.

But with Tom Nissley's  A Reader's Book of Days: True Tales from the Lives and Works of Writers for Every Day of the Year in hand, I found myself becoming more and more fascinated by the minutiae found on this literary calendar. Each page in A Reader's Book of Days represents one day of the year (after an introduction to the specific month), with birth and deaths of authors for that day noted, as well as several paragraphs detailing particular literary events in history or fiction that occurred on this day. On one short page there are plenty of interesting tidbits about authors, books, writing, quotes, and even some illustrations.

These can be quite addicting, even if you only try to read the listing for one day. I started off skipping around to important dates in my life to see what significant events happened then, but now have given up and am happily reading the entire calendar of days straight through from January 1 to December 31.

For example, here are a few sentences from the intro from a month selected at random, June, that are typically well-written by Nissley, unusually interesting, and certainly thought-provoking:

June is sickly sweet; it's insipid. Is that because it's so warm, or because it rhymes so easily? June, moon, spoon, balloon ... But while Robert Burns happily rhymed his "red, red rose / That' newly sprung in June" with a "melody / that's newly sprung in June," Gwendolyn Brooks burned off any sugar in the terse rhythms of "We Real Cool": her "Jazz June" is followed by "Die soon" ...

Continuing on to a random date in that month, June 2, we see that this is the birthday of Thomas Hardy (1840 - author of The Return of the Native) and Norton Juster (1929 - author of The Phantom Tollbooth and The Dot and the Line). Who else besides Nissley remembers The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics, much less makes a reference to this fantastic line-drawing children's book? And that's why I love A Reader's Book of Days. 

June 2 is also marks the death of George S. Kaufman (1961 - author of The Man Who Came to Dinner) as well as these interesting, useless tidbits:

1963  Former car thief Jacky Maglia, a protege of Jean Genet, won a race in Belgium in a Lotus that Genet had paid for with a sizable loan from his publisher.

1977 Not yet forty, Raymond Carver had hit bottom and sobered up before, but never for long. After his first book of stories, Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?, was nominated for a National Book Award in March, he stayed sober for a few weeks, but at the booksellers convention in San Francisco he went on a final bender....[A]fter the publisher offered him $5,000 to write a novel, his first book advance, Carver went to the bathroom to cry and then to the liquor store to celebrate. But on this day four days later, at a bar in Arcata, California, he took the last drink of his life.

1978  After not seeing his difficult father, Vladek, for a couple of years, Art Spiegelman went out to Queens to remind him he still wanted to draw a comic book about his life in Poland during the war.... now he sat down with him in earnest and began sketching out the pages that he would fashion, over the next thirteen years, into the two volumes of Maus, the history of his father's survival of the war and Auschwitz.

There are several other short instances found on this date as well, filling it's double-column format neatly onto one page. The references to literary works give glimpses into unknown as well as familiar books that make you want to go out and grab them for further reading... if only you could stop flipping through A Reader's Guide. 

You can see why delving into any date brings unexpected knowledge and personal delight as you learn about people and the world of writing. The trivia and events make this one of the hardest books to put down in my experience. Just try to stop after only one page, even if your eyes are drooping as you read in bed before going to sleep. Impossible.

It's one of the few books I can recommend unequivocally to any reader. It is the perfect bedside table book for yourself or a guest, always providing something new, unexpected, or just plain old astonishing. It probably would make a great gift, but I'll never part with it. Go get it and jump into this detailed world of books, authors, and writing. Hours of fascination, guaranteed.


Happy reading. 

Fred

www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

____________________

If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Pearl, Nancy. Book Lust: Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment, and Reason

The best book by far or succinct, witty, and passionate reviews of high-quality books for any situation from "Action Heroines," to "Aging," to "Zen Buddhism" and everything in between. (previously reviewed here)

Queenan, Joe. One For the Books

Queenan has read over 15,000 books in his lifetime, with no less than 15 going at the same time. His books reviews are opinionated, diverse, and witty and there are plenty of titles for him to discuss. (previously reviewed here)