Kirkus Books releases their Best of 2011 Lists

While Christmas and New Year's Eve are still a few weeks away, the "best of 2011" book lists have already begun to appear. Pity the poor author/illustrator/editor who publishes in December, as they won't ever make the list!

Kirkus Reviews - with the tagline "The World's toughest book critics since 1933" - have begun to drip-feed its best of lists onto their website, beginning with Fiction and Children's. Other lists, including Best Book App, will appear over the coming weeks.

So far I've only read four from the 2011 Best Fiction list - The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, The Magician King by Lev Grossman, Embassytown by China Mieville, and Open City by Tenju Cole. Although I have now put some other titles on hold for summer reading.

Of the four books, I would highly recommend both Open City and Embassytown.

Top 5 Team Chest romance covers I saw in Acquisitions

List by Tosca

"She was carrying two coffees and a donut bag, and right then and there, he fell in love."
- from Animal Magnetism by Jill Shalvis (you *have* to check out the cover for this back, it's total Team Back AND he has a dog - awww!)

One lighthearted post for today coming up. The subject of today's post? Team Chest - romance novel covers that are all about the chest, and nothing but the chest. I wanted to see what new books had come in recently so hotfooted it down to parley with our Acquisitions staff a little ways down the road, and came away with a head full of titles to search for back at my desk. 5 of which make this list. The things I do for your entertainment, people! So...when can I do this again?

Did she do it?

I've just started Alice la Plante's debut novel, Turn of Mind, about Dr Jennifer White, a retired orthopedic surgeon who is struggling with early onset dementia. When her best friend Amanda O'Toole is found murdered, with four of her fingers surgically removed, Jennifer is a key suspect.

Why I picked it up : "Is the perfect murder the one you can't forget or the one you can't remember?" - the promotional tagline caught my eye.

Who I'd recommend it to : To anyone who has read Still Alice by Lisa Genova.

It won the The Wellcome Trust Book Prize 2011.

5 questions I failed in 'The Man Test: How Manly Are You?'

List by Tosca

I am not a man. I don't say that to surprise people, or even to surprise myself. I say it because...it's true. I'm not a man. And yet I was still disappointed to find that I failed some (most) of the questions in Dodenhoff's book The man test: How manly are you? Apparently, not very. Not at all, actually. It wasn't that I expected to pass them all. It's that I hate to fail a test. Any test. It doesn't matter if the test isn't really meant for me, I just don't want to fail it. I daresay it's a hangover from being somewhat (a whole chunk) of a girly swot as a toddler/child/teen/adult. Don't let my psuedo-failings stop you from reading the book, though. I was greatly entertained by some of the questions, even if my answers were (more often than not) a variation of, "There's no way you'd catch me there in the first place so that doesn't apply." Dodenhoff's book is more about being prepared for whatever life can throw at you - weddings, domestic skills, negotiating job salary, etc. What was it John Lennon said? "Life is what happens when you're making other plans." Amen. So, maybe I won't end up being chased by a bear, and maybe I won't ever need to know what a master cylinder is, but it doesn't hurt that I read about it. Test over, and I am no closer to being a man. Perhaps you'll do better than I did :) Here are five (only five - I couldn't put the whole book here) questions I failed...

Vegetarian cookbooks to be inspired by

A friend recently tweeted that she needed some advice as she had unexpected vegetarian dinner guests arriving. I was a little puzzled. Surely cooking vegetarian isn't *that* hard, or indeed that unusual, these days.

Perhaps all she really needed was a little inspiration from some new(ish) vegetarian cookbooks, such as :

Meat free Monday Cookbook by Paul, Stella & Mary McCartney. Following on from the campaign to get people in the UK to not eat meat at least one day per week, this cookbook has a whole year's worth of delicious "meat free Monday" menus (from breakfast to pudding).

Plenty and Ottolenghi: the cookbook by Yotam Ottolenghi, based on Ottolenghi's new vegetarian columns in The Guardian as well as loads of recipes from the London Ottolenghi restaurants.

Rowan Bishop's Vegetarian Kitchen by Rowan Bishop, a New Zealander who has been writing about vegetarian cooking for ages, and has filled this new book with fantastic favourites as well as plenty of new dishes.

So next time you need some vegetarian inspiration, or perhaps you want to try something new, or even be prepared for those unexpected dinner guests, take a look at the vegetarian cooking section (start browsing from 641.5636 in the nonfiction section at your nearest library).