{"id":18132,"date":"2016-03-10T06:00:22","date_gmt":"2016-03-10T11:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=18132"},"modified":"2016-03-10T06:00:22","modified_gmt":"2016-03-10T11:00:22","slug":"25th-anniversary-books-of-the-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=18132","title":{"rendered":"25th Anniversary Books of the Years"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s a bookstore anniversary year for your ShelfTalker bloggers. Josie noted here<\/a> in January that she and Elizabeth were preparing assiduously for the Flying Pig’s 20th anniversary. DDG will be 25 this year and we are in planning mode ourselves. One idea I had was to pick one book of the year for each of our 25 years, from 1991-2015. It’s a difficult process and I decided to talk theory with the world’s greatest expert on this sort of selection, The Librarian of Years, who has been gracious enough to speak with us here<\/a> before.
\n\"\"Kenny:<\/span> Thanks so much for helping out again!
\nLibrarian of Years:<\/span> Absolutely!
\nKenny: <\/span>First of all, is the selection of a single Book of the Year something you do personally?
\nLibrarian of Years: <\/span>Oh yes, we have an entire Library wing dedicated to displaying them!
\nKenny: <\/span>Great! My main question involves selection philosophy. For example, in 1991 I have good memories of both Griffin and Sabine<\/em>, which was such a big book that year, but also of Possession<\/em>, which came out in paperback that year, and is the first new release I remember handselling with abandon.
\n
\nLibrarian of Years: <\/span>Good question. I use a selection tool I call Relational Resonance. Think of how a particular song or piece of music, which you listened to a great deal while reading a specific book, will strongly bring back the memory of being inside that book when you hear the song again.
\nKenny: <\/span>Sure!
\n\"\"Librarian of Years: <\/span>Books are like those songs pertaining to years, and you should choose the book that resonates most strongly in relation to your own memory of the bookstore that year.
\nKenny: <\/span>Thanks, that’s very helpful. I must admit, though, that I still find the selection process unclear in some cases. For example in 1998 I am torn between Ex Libris<\/em> by Anne Fadiman, an all-time favorite handsell, and Rebecca Rupp’s The Dragon of Lonely Island<\/em>, another store favorite. You see, when The Dragon of Lonely Island<\/em> went out of print I went on a campaign lobbying for it to come back. I heard from my Candlewick rep at the time, Deb Woodward, that a store I’d never heard of at the time, the Flying Pig, had been lobbying for that independently. Candlewick heeded our dual plea and the book was reprinted and is still in print.
\nLibrarian of Years: <\/span>That is a toughie, but I could see, even as you were asking your question, that you knew what you had to do.
\nKenny: <\/span>Right again. Thanks so much for your help.
\nLibrarian of Years: <\/span>My pleasure. \u00a0And good luck with your list.
\nAll right then. Here is my final list. Have any of you made similar lists? Post them in the comments!
\n1991<\/strong> Possession<\/em>, A.S. Byatt
\n1992<\/strong> Smilla’s Sense of Snow<\/em>, Peter Hoeg
\n1993<\/strong> The Shipping News<\/em>, Annie Proulx
\n1994<\/strong> Corelli’s Mandolin<\/em>, Louis de Bernieres
\n1995<\/strong> The<\/em> Golden Compass<\/em>, Philip Pullman
\n1996<\/strong> The Debt to Pleasure<\/em>, John Lanchester
\n1997<\/strong> Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone<\/em>, that Rowling woman.
\n1998<\/strong> The Dragon of Lonely Island<\/em>, Rebecca Rupp
\n1999<\/strong> The Bad Beginning<\/em>, Lemony Snicket
\n2000<\/strong> The Thief Lord<\/em>, Cornelia Funke
\n2001<\/strong> River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze<\/em>, Peter Hessler
\n2002<\/strong> A Story for Bear<\/em>, Dennis Haseley
\n2003<\/strong> The Amulet of Samarkand<\/em>, Jonathan Stroud
\n2004<\/strong> Utterly Me, Clarice Bean<\/em>, Lauren Child
\n2005<\/strong> Temple Stream<\/em>, Bill Roorbach
\n2006<\/strong> The Arrival<\/em>, Shaun Tan
\n2007<\/strong> The Name of the Wind<\/em>, Patrick Rothfuss
\n2008<\/strong> The Hunger Games<\/em>, Suzanne Collins
\n2009<\/strong> The Angel’s Game<\/em>, Carlos Ruiz
\n2010<\/strong> The Passage<\/em>, Justin Cronin
\n2011<\/strong> The Night Circus<\/em>, Erin Morgenstern
\n2012<\/strong> When We Were the Kennedys<\/em>, Monica Wood
\n2013<\/strong> The Boys in the Boat<\/em>, Daniel James Brown
\n2014<\/strong> The Glass Sentence<\/em>, S.E. Grove
\n2015<\/strong> Seveneves<\/em>, Neal Stephenson<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A list of bookstore favorites from 1991 to 2015, compiled with a little help.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18132\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}