If you’re looking for a quick reminder of favorite winter-themed titles for a book display, check out my article in the new Nick Jr. on “Books that Celebrate Winter.”

If you’re experiencing a sudden run on Everything Matters! by Ron Currie, it may be because Stephenie Meyer, in her “Behind the Scenes” Oprah interview, said it’s the book she’s reading now and can’t wait to get back to. Amazon’s editors chose it for their Top 100 of 2009, at #63. It also got strong reviews in the L.A. Times, and the NYT.

Summarizing the book is next to impossible, as Library Journal demonstrated in their review:

This book is difficult to categorize. It’s a comedy, but it’s not particularly funny. It’s a novel of ideas, but it mocks intellectualism. It’s a fantasy, but it includes a cameo appearance by Sen. Olympia Snowe. This won’t be everyone’s cup of tea…

Everything Matters! Ron Currie, Jr. Retail Price: $25.95 Hardcover: 320 pages Publisher: Viking Adult – (2009-06-25) ISBN / EAN: 0670020923 / 9780670020928

As most of her fans already know, she loves Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte. Shakespeare is a “foundation block” of her first reading experiences. Among YA authors,  she likes Scott Westerfeld and loves Shannon Hale. Science fiction is a favorite; Orson Scott Card is her “personal hero.”

Newsweek’s book coverage had become a bit sporadic (also true, sadly, for most of the weeklies, with the notable exceptions of People, Entertainment Weekly and The New Yorker).

The current issue (July 13; Michael Jackson on the cover, of course) makes up for that with a feature on the 50 books that are not “best books,”  but books that “open a window on the times we live in.” Who needs “another list telling you how great The Great Gatsby” is, they say (nonetheless, online, perhaps as a form of self-protection, they also provide a best list – Newsweek’s Top 100 Books).

It’s interesting to see the mix of older and contemporary books on the list; number one is Trollope’s 1875 masterpiece, The Way we Live Now. Newsweek says,

Trollope’s satire of financial (and moral) crisis in Victorian England even has a Madoff-before-Madoff, a tragic swindler named Augustus Melmotte.

Harry Potter doesn’t make the cut, but Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising series does.

This list is more fun than the over-familiar “bests” lists. It would make a great book display or a reading group discussion (“What books would you choose?”)

This is off topic, but we thought you’d like to know:

Maybe it’s not completely off topic, though; how about a memorial display, featuring the book:

Dear Socks, Dear Buddy: Kids’ Letters to the First Pets
by Clinton, Hillary Rodham
Unfortunately, no longer in print.

Buddy, who did not get along with Socks (which is the reason that Socks went to live with President Clinton’s secretary, Betty Currie, when the Clintons moved to Chappaqua, NY) died after he was hit by a car in 2002.

Paste magazine asked various authors to pick the books they liked most this year.

Stephen King says that 2008 marks his discovery of British thriller/suspense writer Robert Goddard. He calls the books “amazing tricks of conjury. Here are surprises that really surprise.”

As King says, a “handful” of his books have been reissued in the U.S (large libraries I checked have about a dozen); a good opportunity for a display — “What Keeps Stephen King Up at Night.”

(Thanks to Publishers Lunch for pointing this article out).