I’m working a split shift today because of tonight’s movie night, and have decided to make use of the few in-between hours to catch up on my review reading.  My goal is to wade through all of those un-read review journals before I go on vacation in two and a half weeks – a worthy goal, to be sure, but perhaps an unachievable goal.  We’ll see.

As I said to Lisa yesterday, I’m spending my entire monthly budget, and I’m getting all the best books out there, as well as keeping up with new volumes in the many, many series that we’ve committed to at the library.  I don’t feel that I’ve missed out on any books…but then that stack of review journals stares at me. 

Perhaps the real issue here is that the internet has changed the way book buying happens.  I read many children’s literature based blogs which keep me up to date on current great offerings, and also tap into many “best books” lists.  I also pay careful attention to the books that my library’s patrons request, watching for reading trends that I see in those requests.   In addition, I’m lucky enough to work at a library that has a review feature in the online catalog, so if I hear of a book that sounds interesting, I use our catalog to check the reviews that have been written about it. 

In addition to these online resources, I make periodic trips to my local independent bookstore, the fabulous Concord Bookshop.  There I can find books that don’t necessarily appear in review journals, yet have great merit, and I am able to thumb through the books to make my own judgement about them.  Last Sunday I scribbled the titles of many terrific books in my pocket calendar,then took the calendar to work and looked up reviews of all those books online.  I also picked up a BookSense flyer, the children’s edition, and systematically went through and looked up each of those books.  Several of the BookSense recommended books received excellent reviews from VOYA, the Horn Book magazine, Booklist, etc. 

My technique seems to be working, if the case of Gregor and the Code of Claw by Suzanne Collins is any example.  I perused Collins’ website months ago and preordered the book so that it was on our library shelves on the earliest possible date.  For about two months, we were one of only three libraries in my region to have the book; I even purchased a second copy because my library’s patrons were clambering to have it.  Clearly my system worked, in this instance.

So what I’m getting at is that I’ll still keep plowing through pages of print copy, and I’ll catch up on all those reviews, but there are now so many other ways to find great books.  I suspect we’ll all have to modify the way that we search for books in the coming years.