Archive for December, 2012

Monday, December 17th, 2012

LT Staff’s Favorite 2012 Reads

I asked everyone on the LT staff to put together a list of their five favorite reads from 2012. Here’s what they came up with:

Tim:

The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene.

The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell.

1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann.

Why Big Fierce Animals are Rare: An Ecologist’s Perspective by Paul A. Colinvaux.

Danny the Champion of the World by Roald Dahl (with my son).


Abby:

The Art Forger by B. A. Shapiro.

Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan.

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller.

Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeannette Winterson.

Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan.

Abby adds “Because picking just 5 is hard, honorable mention to: The Rook by Daniel O’Malley, Shadow of Night by Deborah Harkness, and Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn.”


Chris H.:

Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power by Jon Meacham.

The Fourth Part of the World by Toby Lester.

The Icon Handbook by Jon Hicks.

The Art of Urban Sketching by Gabriel Campanario.

The Road to Ubar by Nicholas Clapp.


Jeremy:

Charles Jessold, Considered as a Murderer by Wesley Stace.

The Passage of Power by Robert Caro.

The Rector and the Rogue by W.A. Swanberg (the new edition edited by Paul Collins).

The Social Conquest of Earth by E.O. Wilson.

The Stockholm Octavo by Karen Engelmann.

Honorable mentions here for The Beekeeper’s Apprentice by Laurie R. King and PYG: The Memoirs of a Learned Pig by Russell A. Potter. NB: I always post a top ten fiction and a top ten non-fiction list on my blog on December 31, so check in there at the end of the year for the complete list.


Kate:

How to Be a Woman by Caitlin Moran.

The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker.

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn.

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed.

The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides.

Kate gives an honorable mention to Pulphead: Essays by John Jeremiah Sullivan.


Mike:

The Blinding Knife by Brent Weeks.

In the Woods by Tana French.

The Riyria Revelations (series) by Michael J. Sullivan.

Chronicles of the Black Company by Glen Cook.

Hide and Seek by Ian Rankin.


Seth:

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.

Mistborn: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson.

The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Hunter.

PHP Master: Write Cutting-Edge Code by Davey Shafik.


What were your favorite 2012 reads? Come tell us here.

Labels: holiday, reading

Thursday, December 13th, 2012

End-of-2012 ReadaThing!

Mark your calendars! Coming up soon is the special End-of-2012 ReadaThing! All are welcome, and you don’t have to read for the full week: the goal is to have a few people from around the world reading at any given time during the ReadaThing. You don’t even have a pick a set time if you don’t want to – just dip in and out as your reading schedule permits!

The official start time will be at midnight on Sunday, 23 December UTC: that’s 7 p.m. Saturday in the Eastern US/Canada/LT time zone. This ReadaThing will have a staggered ending at midnight local time on January 1, 2013, to ring in the New Year in true LT style. See the time chart here.

For more information, see the announcement thread; to sign up, head right to the ReadaThing wiki. As we get closer to the date, we’ll add threads where you can post what will you be reading, and during the ReadaThing you can use the “Log Book” thread to document your ReadaThing experience.

For more on ReadaThings, and to participate in planning future events, join the ReadaThing group.

Labels: holiday, readathon, reading

Wednesday, December 12th, 2012

Welcome Seth, LT’s new sysadmin!

We are delighted to welcome Seth Ryder (LT member sryder) to the LibraryThing staff. Seth is our new systems administrator, and aside from all the usual system-administrator-type stuff, we threw him into the deep end last week by having him help us out with SantaThing ordering on his fourth day on the job!

Seth grew up in a small town outside Grand Rapids, Michigan. He worked for a large hosting company in the midwest where he spent his time as a Systems Administrator and even dabbled with a bit of quality assurance work for their internal development team. He has also has been doing freelance development for a few small companies over the past three years. At LibraryThing, Seth steps in to succeed Brian Stinson, who left LT for a great job at Kansas State University, where he’s working on his graduate degree in political science.

When he’s not busy keeping LibraryThing up and running, Seth says he enjoys attending concerts, learning about new technologies, reading fantasy books, exploring local breweries with friends, and hacking on personal projects. His favorite authors include J.R.R. Tolkien, George R.R. Martin, J.K. Rowling, and Brandon Sanderson. You can follow him on Twitter at @sethryder.

Labels: employees, sysadmin

Wednesday, December 5th, 2012

December LTER Batch is up!

The December 2012 batch of Early Reviewer books is up! We’ve got 87 books this month, and a grand total of 2,469 copies to give out.

First, make sure to sign up for Early Reviewers. If you’ve already signed up, please check your mailing address and make sure it’s correct.

Then request away! The list of available books is here:
http://www.librarything.com/er/list

The deadline to request a copy is Wednesday, January 2, 2013 at 6 p.m. EST.

Eligiblity: Publishers do things country-by-country. This month we have publishers who can send books to the US, Canada, the UK, Israel, and more. Make sure to check the flags by each book to see if it can be sent to your country.

Thanks to all the publishers participating this month!

Archipelago Books Taylor Trade Publishing Mulholland Books
Ballantine Books Random House Monarch Books
Quirk Books Henry Holt and Company Safkhet Fantasy
Safkhet Cookery Eerdmans Books for Young Readers WaterBrook Press
Dragonwell Publishing Bell Bridge Books Plume
Scribner Books The Permanent Press Kirkdale Press
JournalStone Algonquin Books Crown Publishing
Random House Trade Paperbacks CarTech Books Sunrise River Press
Fine Life Books Penguin Young Readers Group Crossed Genres Publications
Top Five Books Illuminated Publications, LTD BookViewCafe
Pink Petal Books Jupiter Gardens Press Humanist Press
Orca Book Publishers Demos Health Two Harbors Press
Copper Ridge Press Hunter House PublicAffairs
Portfolio Prufrock Press Glass House Press
Dog Ear Publishing

Labels: early reviewers, LTER
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