WCLS

When asked about their favorite books of 2012, hundreds of librarians around the country tweeted their favs over twelve days.  Here is the list of the titles that received the most votes (400 titles mentioned in nearly 700 votes).  My favorites of 2012?

• Louise Erdrich's The Round House - Big questions told through the accessible voice of a young boy struggling to understand circumstances that have fractured his family and community.
• Lance Weller's Wilderness - Thought-provoking narrative about a Civil War veteran who takes refugee from his demons along the pristine and virtually unpeopled Pacific coast.
• Eden Robinson's Monkey Beach - Set along the coast north of Vancouver Island, delicious writing, a story that gets under your skin and haunts you.
• Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed - broke my heart, made me laugh, and reminded me how words used well have the power to touch as at our core.
• Detroit City is the Place to Be by Mark Binelli - an evocative journey back to the city of my youth, once a template for the industrial city of the future, can Detroit show us a new path once again?

Started in 2008, the WA Anytime Library collection currently consists of 11,095 titles, 9,022 of them ebooks and 5,163 of them downloadable audiobooks.  In the month of December alone, 394 new ebooks and 117 new audiobooks were purchased.  If you have a new tablet or ereader, the WA Anytime Library can help you keep stocked with good reading material.  The FAQ/Help page will get you started or attend a help session at one of our libraries for hands-on assistance from knowledgeable staff.  On the library events calendar, limit event types to "technology events" to see only ereader help sessions.

So you got a new eReader as a holiday gift and you want to put some books on it ... try Freading! Accessed using your WCLS library card, the ebooks at Freading are always available, so no waiting. The Freading loan model is unique in that you are given tokens each week to "spend" on ebooks - the library only pays for the books that get used and more than one person at a time can use them.  The six biggest publishers have not agreed to have their books available through Freading, so you won't find any bestsellers here.  But there is lots of interesting reading from dozens of other publishers, all available to you right now.  Use the CATEGORY tab at the top of the page to browse for the type of reading you enjoy.  Happy Holidays from Book Buzz!

EarlyWord, a newsletter for publishers and librarians, has pulled together a list of cookbooks published in 2012 that have been highly touted by editorial staff at epicurious.com, Amazon, Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, and the Washington Post.  For all you foodies at there, here is the list linked to the library catalog for easy requesting.  It includes quite a variety of cooking styles ... among them, foods of Burma, street food, foraging, preserving, cakes, tofu, paleo and vegan.  Bon Appétit!