Sunday 26 June 2011

Best of the Best (BOB)

Best of the Best (or BOB as we prefer to call it!) began 4 years ago in Havering.  We wanted to run a book award - but didn't want to plough through millions of books!  We decided that we would only take books that were either prize winners already or highly nominated for a prize.  Originally, the award was for KS2 and KS3 books, with separate categories for each.

Last year, with the introduction of a larger Reader Development Team, we decided to start a category for adult books - with the same criteria of course.  

We now have our adult shortlist for 2011/2012 up and running - it is being read by reading group members in Havering, but we would like to encourage everyone to join in via this blog.  As I write this, from home on a Sunday evening (!!!), I dont have the full list at hand.  However, I can tell you that the Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson and One Day by David Nicholls are on there!  

There are huge numbers of books for the children's lists so, when shortlisting is done at the end of August, I will pop up the list for you to read along.  It doesnt matter whether you are child or adult, please feel free to read along with us!

If you look at the top of the blog (just below our blog title) you will see a couple of tabs - there is one up there for BOB - thats the place to find the shortlists for both of the awards.  You will also see another tab called Book Reviews - so if you would like to send us a review please send it to ruth dot gedalovitch at havering dot gov dot uk.  Please excuse the way this needs to be typed - its just to try and avoid spammers!  I am sure you can all work out how to type it in properly!  Oh - and we reserve the right not to publish your review if it is offensive!  Other than that, we will try to publish as many reviews as we can (even if we dont agree with them!!).

Well, I am off to drink my white hot chocolate now - thanks for taking the time to read this post - and do add a comment!



Tuesday 7 June 2011

Welcome

Wow, you found us - great!  Who are we then?  Well, we are a happy little band of Havering library staff and friends of libraries (and who knows who else will be added as we go on?) - we all share a love of books and reading and wanted a place on the web to share this love with .... the world!

We plan to have monthly themes and blog about our favourite and most hated books within those themes. 

We are using labels on our posts, so that you can see who has written the post and also to enable you to search for particular authors, titles or themes.

Then its over to you...its going to be very quiet over here if no one comments on our posts, so please take the time to let us know what you think about the books, suggest other books and other themes.  We want this to be an interactive, busy little blog - not one covered in dusty cobwebs!

Thanks for popping over - next time, bring cakes!