Heard some rave reviews on the advance copy of THE BLUE EDGE OF NOWHERE by Jonathan King. Publication date is March 28...

From Publishers Lunch, 03.18.02

"Feast and Famine at Libraries
Two articles paint a contrasting picture on the state of libraries. Cerritos, CA prepares to join a wave of cities with high-tech new libraries that also serve as gateways to the electronic world and even community centers, as they celebrate the opening of a "$35-million futuristic building clad in titanium and hard-wired for interaction." Meanwhile, though, the Boston Globe laments how "funding shortages are keeping Massachusetts near the bottom of state-by-state rankings of school libraries." Many schools have no librarian at all and collections are aging and even outdated. Plus, "Research published in this month's issue of American Libraries magazine shows that based on 1990 Census data, 57 percent of professional librarians (including those in schools and in public libraries) will reach retirement age between 2005 and 2019."

http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/076/metro/School_libraries_lacking+.shtml
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-000019493mar17.story?coll=la%2Dheadlines%2Dpe%2Dcalifornia

There is a great website that one of my readers steered me to called The Readers Refuge:

http://www.geocities.com/lettore59/index.html

There are lots of reviews and interesting essays. Go check it out!

Found an interesting article entitled "Public Hanging: the Death of the Book Review " from a Canadian website called The Danforth Review. It's long but very interesting reading to anyone who has wondered about the credibility of a review and/or a reviewer.

http://www.danforthreview.com/features/essays/death_of_the_book_review.htm