CODES

Barry Trott, editor

 

Notable Books Council
The announcements of the 2014 winners for the Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction & Nonfiction in Las Vegas was a lively event. This year the Notable Books Council was asked to put their super-human readers’ advisory skills to use and compile a list of read alikes for the finalists and reading group discussion guides for the winners, Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch for fiction and Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism.

Here’s what Katharine Phenix, chair of the Notable Books Council had to say about the process:

What’s it like for a group of 12 librarians, spread out from Washington to Florida, North Carolina to New Mexico to work together on a project with a 2-week deadline? First we had to agree on which Internet cloud to work on….Then conversation became lively, one suggestion led to another, one author to another, and our mini-book club and bibliographer brains got to work. Which micro-history is most like On Paper? Salt? Coffee? Oysters?” and “Is this too academic?” and “Looking for more literature of disaster and redemption…” are a few of our gambits.

Did you love the Carnegie finalists? RUSA’s Notable Books Council recommends these other fantastic reads!

Interested in hosting a reading group for the Carnegie winners? Take a look at the discussion guides the Notable Books Council has created.
The Goldfinch
The Bully Pulpit