To classify The Forever War as a work of literature instead of, say, as a piece of “war correspondence,” is not to denigrate its journalistic integrity. Dexter Filkins’ reporting is as rigorous in this book’s informal vignettes and essays as it was when he delivered the daily news from Afghanistan and Iraq for The New York Times.
The Forever War, though, deserves to be considered alongside long-praised and similarly structured modern literary classics such as Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried and Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street — books that achieved their raw force and nightmarish beauty by mixing elements of fiction and creative nonfiction. That The Forever War is, front to back, a true story, is a testament to Filkins’ literary talent and extraordinary accomplishment.
Why book reviews?
Why all the book review links the past few days? Other than the fact that libraries have books, what do these titles about war and politics have to do with our profession? I would appreciate reviews of books about librarianship, but for general book reviews I have other sources.
General news slow down
This is the time of year when news slows down a bit. Every four years the main focus is politics as there is a presidential election contest going on. Unless you want the ceaseless parade of Sarah Palin book banning stories, not a whole lot is going on right now.
I recognize that you do not like book reviews. That is understandable. As someone who has had an account at the site for a while now, are you willing to look at the taxonomy tree to pick and choose what you do want to see? It isn’t really that hard to pipe such into an RSS reader. After all, how is the podcast listed in the iTunes Music Store but that way? You can check out the taxonomy list here: http://lisnews.org/taxonomy/vocabulary/2.
The authors pick and choose what to post. For example, my posting will come from the realm of technology as well as the podcast. Each of us has our own tastes that we bring to the party. Sometimes we bring up neat things to share. Sometimes we bring up things we think bigger resources like Choice might have overlooked. The authors are a fairly diverse bunch and that diversity is what keeps it interesting.
As for reviewing books about librarianship, frankly there is not a whole lot of interest in that for me. Do we really need book upon book upon book about the joys of Web 2.0? After a while, it is all pretty repetitious and frankly boring. We’re not seeing major earth-shattering innovations in librarianship necessarily at the moment. As one of the LISNews authors, I would not be one to review a strictly LIS book. One of the others might though.
________________________
Stephen Michael Kellat, Host, LISTen
PGP KeyID: 899C131F
Response
>I would appreciate reviews of books about librarianship
Whenever I find reviews about books relating to librarianship or I just know of a new librarianship book I post it. On 8/29 I posted a review about the book “Reinventing Knowledge: From Alexandria to the Internet.”
>Why all the book review links the past few days? Other than the fact >that libraries have books, what do these titles about war and politics >have to do with our profession?
I think librarians should be aware of books that are being featured in the main stream media. In regards to the political books that was a Washington Post article and we are nearing an election. For the librarians that work reference in public and academic libraries and have any kind of reader services role it would be good to know the major political books that are being discussed when we are two months from an election.
“The Forever War” book was featured on “Morning Edition” on NPR and is the 17th bestselling book on Amazon.com. I am sure libraries are starting to see increased request for this book. A book merely being a best seller is not enough for me to post about it but if the review is particularly memorable or makes an extra interesting point those are some of the things I look at. This paragraph is what caught my eye with Forever War: The Forever War, though, deserves to be considered alongside long-praised and similarly structured modern literary classics such as Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried and Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street — books that achieved their raw force and nightmarish beauty by mixing elements of fiction and creative nonfiction.
“The Things They Carried” is a book that numerous cities that have “One City, One Book” programs have considered as a title and also was a very popular book. For “Forever War” to be compared to “Things They Carried” made me think it was a book that librarians should know about.
I also posted a news article about a book called “Will Terrorists Go Nuclear?”. This book had me thinking about the “Patriot Act”. Past terrorist acts like Sept.11 and the idea of possible future attacks are why the government is wanting to monitor conversations and look into what people are reading. The last line in the article about that book was “If there were an attack, the outcome would depend on the U.S. reaction, asking: “Do we at that point toss the Constitution and bomb half the planet, or do we do something else?”” I think librarians need to be in the discussion of how we respond to major terrorist attacks because one response is going to be to go to a police state. To be aware of books that suggest that we think ahead are good to know about. From the reader’s services angle this would be a good book to suggest to students that are writing papers about terrorism and the responses to terrorism.
Some other general points about the book reviews that are posted:
The book reviews I have posted get the average number of clicks compared to other stories on LISNEWS. If I see certain types of reviews not being read I would shy away from posting those. Since my philosophy has been to make librarians aware of books that are being mentioned in the mainstream media and the somewhat non-mainstream media (NPR) and the stories are being read I think a need is being met. I will look at posting future book reviews with a more critical eye and of course I will continue to focus on any reviews that specifically deal with librarianship but those do not show up as much as we librarians would like.