Free Stuff - Macmillan Library

Uncharted Pages #2: It’s Liiiiiive!

Posted on December 10, 2012 by Ali Fisher

The second installment of Uncharted Pages, my Speculative Fiction recommendation page, is now live! Go check it out!

To celebrate all of the "featured creatures" recommendations, we're giving away a stack of Macmillan books featuring all sorts of bizarre beings and brutish beasts:

UPDATE: This contest is now over. Congratulations to the winner, Debra Wischmeyer in the Readers' Services/Reference Department of Morton Grove Public Library!

Enter to win a copy of all of the titles pictured above:

Head over to Uncharted Pages, click the pale blue envelope icon under my picture, and send me an e-mail with your mailing address and your favorite monster by Friday, January 4th. [CONTEST CLOSED]

This sweepstakes is open to librarians in the United States. More eligibility details below.

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The Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap Giveaway!

Posted on October 24, 2012 by Ali Fisher

Last week Wendy Welch, memoirist and owner of the Tales of The Lonesome Pine bookstore, stopped by the Flatiron with her hubby, Jack!

St. Martin's Press recently published Wendy's memoir, THE LITTLE BOOKSTORE OF BIG STONE GAP, about opening an independent bookstore in a small town in Virginia. I was curious to meet the woman who admitted in the first chapter of her memoir that,

"On something dangerously close to a whim, we became the broke and terrified owners of a five-bedroom, three-bath-with-one-working Edwardian mansion, complete with squeaky hardwood floors and a leaking roof. Under the influence of salsa and sangria, we'd decided to turn this house into a used bookstore, or die trying."

Wendy is unsurprisingly just as wonderful and charming as her memoir.

Publishers Weekly said it well when they said, "The whole narrative exudes enormous charm and the value of dreams and lives truly lived." And Booklist called it "a fervent affirmation of the power of books to bring people together." As book people you will undoubtedly connect to Wendy and her decision to live a life dedicated to passing along great stories.

Autographed Book Giveaway:

Wendy was kind enough to sign a finished copy of her book for us to give away to one lucky librarian!

UPDATE: This contest is now closed! Thank you for entering.

How to Enter: Leave a comment below with your full name and the library you work for by [UPDATED!] Friday, November 16th to be entered into the random drawing. And make sure the e-mail you use is correct, so we can contact you (it's not posted publicly).

This sweepstakes is open to librarians in the United States. More eligibility details below.

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Capturing Camelot Bookplate Offer!

Posted on October 2, 2012 by Ali Fisher

CAPTURING CAMELOT: Stanley Tretick's Iconic Images of the Kennedys is a collection of memorable photos taken by consummate photojournalist, Stanley Tretick.

Tretick was assigned to follow the Kennedy campaign of 1960 and the photographer soon befriended the candidate. When Kennedy took office, Tretick was given extensive access to the White House. Tretick's photographs helped define the American family of the early sixties and lent Kennedy an endearing credibility that greatly contributed to his popularity.

Accompanied by an insightful, heartwarming essay from Kitty Kelley—Tretick's close friend—about the relationship between the photographer and JFK, CAPTURING CAMELOT includes some of the most memorable images of America's Camelot and brings to life the uniquely hopeful historical era from which it emerged.

Planning on getting a copy for your library or yourself?

E-mail Library-at-MacmillanUSA.com (subject: Capturing Camelot) with your name and mailing address and we'll send you a bookplate signed by Kitty Kelley with her particularly adorable signature:

This one's my favorite because it's both silly and sinister:

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RSVP to the 2012 AAP Book Preview Now!

Posted on September 19, 2012 by Ali Fisher

The Association of American Publishers' libraries committee cordially invites you to...

LIBRARIANS' SNEAK PEEK BOOK PREVIEW 2012!

Wednesday, October 10. Noon - 5:30pm
Random House, Café Auditorium Second Floor
1745 Broadway, between 55th and 56th Streets, New York City

The AAP is hosting a day of literary delights for librarians from across the eastern seaboard. Please join us for lunch and an exclusive sneak peek into the new book releases for Winter 2012! We'll be there with 12 other stellar publishers talking about big books, gems, cross-over titles, and our personal favorites coming out of Macmillan early next year. There will be foodstuffs, goodies, and games... get in on this!

Ali will present all of the stellar Macmillan titles at 2:30pm. The full schedule and more details can be found on the official invitation.

Seating is limited and is on a first-come, first-served basis.

RSVP HERE by October 5th to attend. See you there!

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A Romantic Whirlwind Getaway… er, Giveaway!

Posted on August 29, 2012 by Ali Fisher

Dearest librarians,

We're running a romantic giveaway on Twitter today. Whoever sends us the sweetest tweet will get a pile of love from us including:

GUILTY PLEASURE by Lora Leigh

INSATIABLE by Opal Carew

KEPT BY SEDUCTION by Jaymie Holland

HOW TO ROMANCE A RAKE by Manda Collins

The winner is free to shelve them at the library or at home. Share or hoard the love as you see fit!

Here's the scoop:

Feeling romantic? @ reply with something sweet! I'll send this stack to whoever tweets the sweetest. #HOToffthepress twitter.com/MacmillanLib/s…

— Macmillan Library (@MacmillanLib) August 29, 2012

xoxo, Macmillan Library [...]

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Macmillan Library Presents: Tips from Grammar Girl #3

Posted on August 16, 2012 by Ali Fisher

Grandmaster grammar wrangler Mignon Fogarty (a.k.a. Grammar Girl) has agreed to teach us the proper way to talk to librarians about the books and genres we love. We'll be posting her monthly tips here on the blog. Take it away, Grammar Girl!

How to Write a Better Résumé

Talia and Ali tell me that librarians are helping almost as many people find jobs as they are helping find books. One important thing to check for on a résumé is that the bullets match. Not in that fashionable-detective way in which a lady’s bullets match her shoes, but in a slightly less delightful grammatical way: It’s called parallel construction, and this is how it looks:

Activities and Accomplishments

• Hungered for deeper meaning

• Longed for a raise

• Resisted throwing myself out a window

Although that may not be the most appealing list of activities and accomplishments to a potential employer, your candidate won’t be rejected for grammar errors. Note how each bullet point is a sentence fragment that starts with a verb in the past tense. Using a fragment is OK in a bulleted list, and the parallelism of the verbs is pleasing to the eye.

Note how the following list, although more respectable, seems jumbled and wrong because of the lack of parallelism.

Activities and Accomplishments

• Shelving goal of 5,000 books per day met

• Convinced 30 volunteers to work for nothing but doughnuts

• I single-handedly reroofed the library.

Want to help job candidates avoid other errors on their résumés? Check out GRAMMAR GIRL PRESENTS 101 TROUBLESOME WORDS YOU’LL MASTER IN NO TIME and visit Grammar Girl at Grammar.QuickandDirtyTips.com.

We're running our third and final giveaway of one full set of her latest Quick and Dirty Tips books (this set includes four signed(!) books and one unsigned audiobook).

UPDATE: This contest has ended. Congratulations to our winner: Betty H. Lee, Adult and Young Adult Librarian at Rockville Memorial Library!

Enter to win these signed books by sending your name, your library, and your full mailing address to Library-at-MacmillanUSA.com (subject: Grammar Girl) by Friday, August 24th.

This sweepstakes is open to librarians in the United States. More eligibility details below.

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Uncharted Pages: SF/F From Macmillan’s Adult Publishers!

Posted on August 14, 2012 by Ali Fisher

When Talia told me that the brilliant minds at EarlyWord approached her about setting up a blog for Readers' Advisory librarians to learn more about the Science Fiction and Fantasy books coming out of Macmillan I whispered, "mine."

Finally! A place to highlight some of our fantastic fiction for the curious minded!

Each season I'll pick a few titles that I love and tell you a little bit about why I think they're so special. Uncharted Pages will cover a wide range of genres under the speculative fiction umbrella written for teens, adults, and immortals.

Ready to take a peek? Hop on your unicorn/magic carpet/transport zombie and head over to Uncharted Pages!

To celebrate we're giving away one slick, single-shouldered A MEMORY OF LIGHT backpack that we crammed full of finished books!

UPDATE:

This contest has ended. Congratulations to our winner: Brianna Glenn, Library Director at De Soto Public Library!

To Enter:

Head over to Uncharted Pages, click the pale blue envelope icon under my picture, and send me an e-mail introducing yourself. Tell me one thing that you or your patrons love about speculative fiction and I'll enter you in the drawing!

This sweepstakes is open to librarians in the United States. More eligibility details below.

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Macmillan Library Presents: Tips from Grammar Girl #2

Posted on July 17, 2012 by Ali Fisher

Grammar goddess Mignon Fogarty (a.k.a. Grammar Girl) has agreed to teach us the proper way to talk to librarians about the books and genres we love. We'll be posting her monthly tips here on the blog. Take it away, Grammar Girl!

Ali, a sci-fi nerd from planet 645 asked, "I have trouble with verb tense in our present timeline, but when I time travel, I get especially confused. Can you help?"

Ah, the complexities of time travel. If you think the hazards of disrupting the space-time continuum are daunting, consider the grammar. Time travel requires some of the trickier tenses:

Simple Future

Tomorrow, I am going to be born. [going to + verb]

Future Progressive

The robots will already be waiting to kill me. [will be + present participle]

Past Perfect Progressive

Ali had been lying unconscious for three days before she was able to locate herself and surreptitiously attach the beacon that would send her home. [had been + present participle]

Past Perfect

She had made this trip before, so she knew how it would work out. [had + past participle]

I hope that helps, Ali, and stay safe in the future. It can be a dangerous place.

Thank you, Grammar Girl! Unfortunately in my time traveling experience there's no such thing as a simple future or a perfect past, but one can always hope!

See Grammar Girl's previous column in which she taught Talia how to talk about her favorite gory mysteries! Look for 101 TROUBLESOME WORDS YOU'LL MASTER IN NO TIME available now from St. Martin's Griffin. Visit her at Grammar.QuickandDirtyTips.com.

Also, we're giving away one full set of her latest Quick and Dirty Tips books (this set includes four signed(!) books and one unsigned audiobook).

UPDATE: This contest is now closed.

The winner is Ramona L. Grimsley of the Berkeley County Library System!

Enter to win these signed books by sending your name, your library, and your full mailing address to Library-at-MacmillanUSA.com (subject: Grammar Girl) by Monday, July 23rd.

This sweepstakes is open to librarians in the United States. More eligibility details below.

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Sign Up Now: Edelweiss Librarian Boot Camp!

Posted on July 11, 2012 by Ali Fisher

July 24th, 2012 2pm Eastern

Join Joe Foster of Edelweiss and Stephanie Wilkes of Ouachita Parish Public Library for a (sweat-free) Edelweiss Librarian Boot Camp.

Learn the best ways to navigate Edelweiss and how to discover new upcoming titles, create lists and collections, request Digital Review Copies (e-galleys) and communicate with your staff and colleagues.

For librarians only, registration for the Edelweiss Librarian Boot Camp will be capped at 250, so register soon!

Why Macmillan wants you to attend:

We host all of our digital catalogs with Edelweiss now (PROOF!) and we're slowly starting to host some e-galleys there, too, so we want you to get comfortable navigating the site.

Here's how to register:

Simply email Joe Foster at joe-at-abovethetreeline.com with "Boot Camp Registration" in the subject line.

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More UNSHELVED Readers?! Yes, Please!

Posted on July 10, 2012 by Ali Fisher

Well, well, well. If it isn't another Unshelved reader... Duck!

I just threw a handful of confetti and glitter and ducks at the screen. You're so welc—Uh oh, did I get some in your eye? No wait, you're just tearing up because you've never felt SO welcome at a blog before! We totally understand.

Whether you're new to this blog, a long time reader, or you clicked on Talia's nose to get here yesterday and wanted to click on my nose today, we're glad you're here! (And if you don't know what I'm going on about, check out the banner ad/masterpiece running over the Unshelved comics this week.)

Like yesterday, we encourage you to browse through our recent posts, take a peek at our digital catalogs, and sign up for our Booklist webinar.

But wait there's more! We have yet another giveaway! And this time it's just the type of bloody thriller that you can't get Talia to stop reading...

We have a small stack of hardcover copies of THE NIGHTMARE by the absurdly charming pseudonymous Swedish writing couple, Lars Kepler!

UPDATE: This giveaway has ended!

Want one? Introduce yourself in an e-mail (to: Library-at-MacmillanUSA.com) that includes your name, the library you work for, and the full mailing address where you would like to receive the book.

Best, (No, you're the best!)
Talia & Ali
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