Dear winways,
Welcome to the February 2015 State of the Thing! We're a bit late this month, partly because we've been working on some exciting new features, but also because my laptop got thirsty and I tried to share my beer with it. That went about as well as you might think. Without further ado: we've got new features, new merch, and an interview with author Sharma Shields!.
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Lending Feature
I'm very pleased to announce LibraryThing’s first ever lending (a.k.a. "circulation") feature! Operating from your catalog, book page, or the dedicated Lending page, you can check books in or out, place holds, check patron or item circulation history, and more. Check out our blog post for a handy tutorial video, and take it for a spin! We'd welcome your feedback over on Talk.
You can find the Lending column in your catalog added to style preset B, or add it to your preferred display style by clicking the "Settings" button at the top of the page. Use the drop down menus to set one of the columns in your preferred display style to “Lending,†and save. Then you’re ready to go!
Like most fields in Your Books, you can double-click on the “lending†field for any given book to see that books circulation history, or set a new status. Check books out to your patrons or friends with the click of a button, using pre-set or custom due dates. Your Lending column will tell you when books are overdue, or holds should be removed.
New Stamps
When we unveiled the LibraryThing Stamp in 2011, you gave us some great ideas for making them better. We listened!
We're proud to now offer the compact half inch stamp—a smaller version of the classic LT stamp—along with the new "clean" stamp (pictured) featuring the original "Cataologued on LibraryThing" around an empty circle, leaving room for your own marks, notes, etc. Check out all of our LibraryThing Stamps in the Store, and tell us what you think about the new designs on Talk.
More New Stuff
Better Recommendations Display. We've overhauled the way the Recommendations section of work pages appear to a new "shelf" type display, with cover, title, and author information. It's much more visually appealing now. Plus, we've tweaked the algorithm for chosoing recommendations. You can expand the recommendations section to see recommended books by the same author, compare "old" recommendations, and switch back to the text-based version, if you like. You can also click to rate recommendations directly on the work page. See screenshots of new recommendations in action, on the blog, and come tell us what you think on Talk.
More Non-English Covers. Covers across LibraryThing are now sensitive to the language version of the site you're using. While main work covers won't reflect this, other areas, like recommendations. Come tell us what you think on Talk!
Interview with Sharma Shields
Sharma Shields holds an MFA from the University of Montana and is the author of the short story collection Favorite Monster. Recipient of awards such as the Autumn House Fiction Prize and the Tim McGinnins award for Humor, Shields's work has appeared in Electric Lit, The New York Times, Kenyon Review, and Iowa Review, among others. She has worked in independent bookstores and libraries throughout Washington State and now lives in Spokane with her husband and children, and serves on the board of the Friends of Spokane County Library District.
Shields's first novel, The Sasquatch Hunter's Almanac came out in January 2015. The book follows one man's fanatical search for the Sasquatch haunting him from his youth, and how his obsession shapes the lives of his family, who have monsters of their own to contend with.
LibraryThing staffer KJ caught up with Sharma this month to talk about her work.
For our readers who haven't had a chance to read it yet, can you give us the nutshell version of what The Sasquatch Hunter's Almanac is all about?
When people ask me what the novel is about, I typically tell them, "It’s a family drama involving Sasquatch." That is an extremely truncated plot, of course, but it also rings very true to me, because it is definitely about family first and foremost. The weird stuff is really meant to be secondary to the struggles of the Roebuck family.
You've previously published a book of short stories, Favorite Monster, which also discusses monsters. Did The Sasquatch Hunter's Almanac evolve out of any of these stories?
The last story I wrote for Favorite Monster was called "Field Guide to Monsters of the Inland Northwest," and featured a woman who may or may not be Sasquatch. She is humiliated and publicly tortured by a cryptozoologist named Dr. Eli Roebuck, who became the central character in The Sasquatch Hunter's Almanac. He is not as ruthless or immoral in the novel; he morphed into a more vulnerable and interesting character, although he is still deeply flawed and mistaken. That story appeared in "The Kenyon Review" just before Stewart O'Nan chose Favorite Monster for the Autumn House Fiction Prize. It was originally a chapter in the novel but I deleted it from the second draft. It was a great starting point, but it no longer fit with the story I was trying to tell.
What kinds of cryptozoology resources did you use for research into this myth?
I used a lot of library resources at both the Spokane Public Library and Spokane County Library District branches: Reference books about local Native legends; online databases like ProQuest for articles on cryptozoologists such as Grover Krantz; books from the library's general collection such as Jeff Meldrum's Sasquatch, Legend Meets Science. I also used basic internet searches when at home or elsewhere; this was how I stumbled on Sherman Alexie's outstanding "The Sasquatch Poems."
There are entire organizations based on Sasquatch research. The most notable for me was BFRO (Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization). I scoured their website, too, and based a fictional organization off of them in the novel: SNaRL, the Sasquatch National Research Lab.
Information is right at the writer's fingertips these days, and I love researching almost as much as I love writing. It really breathes life into a scene or into a character. It also brought some much needed verisimilitude to a novel that flirts with utter incredulity.
I was reminded while reading at several points (mostly when Eli was being an emotionally or physically distant father) of books that involve family curses carried through generations (The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao being one of them, One Hundred Years of Solitude another). Do you think the rest of the monsters in the Roebuck family line came from the first one?
I did think all of the monsters in the book were related in a distant way; I imagined them, initially, as manifestations of the Three Fates from Greek mythology. I didn't want to explain this idea too much in the book, lest it drag the reader out of the storyline, but I did think of them as materializing from the same mystical Land of Shadows (Purgatory), and disappearing back into that land after meddling with the human characters.
I love that you mention One Hundred Years of Solitude here; it's one of my very favorite novels. I love that novel's epic scope and Garcia Marquez's seamless, deadpan marriage of Colombian mythology and history. It's truly a masterpiece.
Monster stories often have a moral tone to them (i.e. "don't go out after dark or the thing will eat you"), which, in a patriarchal culture might manifest in monster myths built to preserve the existing cultural norms (i.e. "don't go off with strange boys or the thing will eat you"). Do the monsters in the lives of your women characters follow this model?
Wow, this is a killer question. I certainly didn't intend for there to be any moral aggrandizing in the novel, but I do think the monsters force each character to reconsider her opinion of herself. There is a certain morality to the book: How do we treat our loved ones? How do we forgive them, and forgive ourselves? How do we maturely handle rejection and loss? Is it better to be selfish or be selfless in terms of one's family? I don't personally believe that there are set answers to these questions, but my obsession with them became central to the book's emotional movement.
Despite the fate-like appearance of these monsters, I didn't write them to suggest that we are not given choices in life. Rather, the monsters in the book tend to appear when a character is at an emotional crossroads, and they are merely forcing the question, "What will you choose?" I see these women as principal agents in their own life: They alone will make the decisions that determine their own happiness or undoing.
Read our full interview here.
Free Books: Early Reviewers
You are not currently signed up for LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program. You are missing out!
Early Reviewers offers free books to members—about 100 titles a month! Since 2007, we've given out over 160,000 books. The catch? Publishes want your honest review. How you review a book won't help or hurt your chances of winning books in the future, but not reviewing your winning will.
» Sign up for Early Reviewers
The February batch of Early Reviewers books contains 2,545 copies of 88 different titles. The deadline to request a free book is Monday, February 23rd at 6pm, Eastern. Look for the March batch around the 2nd.
The most requested books so far from the February batch:
More free books: Member Giveaways
At any given time, there are hundreds of books available from our Member Giveaways program. It's like Early Reviewers, but isn't limited to select publishers—any author or member can post books. Request books, or offer your own!
Hot titles this month
- Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
- All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
- The Martian by Andy Weir
- The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell
- The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin
- Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie
- We Were Liars by E. Lockhart
- The Silkworm by Robert Galbraith
- Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King
- Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami
That's it for this month! I'll see you all in March.
Questions, comments, ideas? Send them my way.
—Loranne (loranne@librarything.com)
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