From All About Romance:
I have always loved libraries, but I admit I had fallen out of the habit of using my local one recently. One of my dear friends is a middle school librarian and she (appropriately) shamed me a bit for it, telling me the best way to make sure libraries stay around and keep their funding is to use them. So, a few months back, I started building weekly trips to my local temple of knowledge into my schedule and added a particular challenge to myself. I would walk directly to the New Releases section and pick up the first book by an author I didn’t recognize.
This has led to some real gems (Behind Her Eyes by Sarah Pinsborough was one) and some duds (which I will leave out for politeness). I told the AAR Staff about my new project and several of them jumped on board, saying it sounded like a great challenge. So many other staffers joined me, in fact, that we’ve decided to make it a regular blog.
The parameters of the project are fairly simple: you must read one book by a new-to-you author, either one you’ve never heard of or one you’ve been meaning to get to, and give it at least fifty pages. For AAR, our additional rule is that the book involves women; written by one or has one as a protagonist. How you acquire the book is up to you; library, bookstore, TBR pile that is threatening to overrun your house. Just make sure you haven’t read the author before.
Link to the rest at All About Romance
I also don’t see how it helps libraries if one of the rules is
“How you acquire the book is up to you; library, bookstore, TBR pile that is threatening to overrun your house.”
Surely the point should be to go to your library to get the book.
Anyway, the freedom to pick your book from any source surely includes your favourite e-reader?
What about the backlist? How about just walking down the stacks and grabbing whatever catches your attention?
They did start with ‘any book’. 😉
Note that this keeps indies out unless the library stocks them – there wouldn’t be any in the new releases to choose from. So, same old, same old.
So, presumably, if you’re into indie authors, you can read their books for this program, provided the author is new to you, because Indie Authors are able to make their books available through a variety of bookstores online.
However – it is rather sad when a writer completely loses track of their thesis between the first paragraph and the third one…
This “project” is supposedly to help libraries by improving their circulation numbers, yes? Or is it to help women authors? Or authors who write about women? (I am so tempted to put a Ringo, er, ringer up on their blog…)
Good point, and their title “Pick a Book . . . Any Book” (emphasis mine) is kind if negated by the requirements of picking a seemingly female author or a book with a female protagonist.
It may take fifty pages to decide if you’re really getting into a book, but much less than that to decide you don’t like it for some reason …
Why does the book have to be written by a woman or have a woman protagonist? I like the challenge otherwise.
More to the point, how can they tell whether an author is a woman,
They can’t do it by appearance because then they would miss out on reading books bye people who are trans.
Doesn’t anyone read the dust jacket to find a new book they think they’d like anymore? I always do that and read the first few pages. I like it, it comes home with me. Easy-peasy and you don’t have to only look in the new releases section.