“You Need More Books! You Know You Do!”

Since The Rap Sheet was one of the earliest contributors to that mighty migrating mystery-fest known as the Carnival of the Criminal Minds, we’ve been keeping track of its progress ever since. This week, it was finally dumped back into the hands of its creator, librarian and author Barbara Fister (In the Wind).

The quality of this series has, quite frankly, been inconsistent. Some contributors have put more energy into compiling useful or interesting individual blog posts than others. However, the intention of the project remains a good one: to introduce readers to the Web’s astounding cornucopia of writing about crime fiction. And credit for the idea belongs to Fister.

So it’s interesting to see how she takes up the gauntlet. Like a number of her predecessors, she opts for the themed Carnival post, focusing “on blogs that are book barkers”--sites that encourage you to read more (and more), and damn those to-be-read piles already begging for your attention. Among her mix, Fister references some of our favorites (Detectives Beyond Borders, International Noir Fiction, Material Witness, and Euro Crime), plus a few that even we hadn’t heard of before (I Read, Therefore I Am and Nearly Nothing But Novels). All too frequently, these Carnival collections of links cause us to expand The Rap Sheet’s already cascading blogroll.

Again, Fister’s big tent full of fun can be found here. An archive of previous Carnival entries can be found here.

Next up in the Carnival queue: Bernd Kochanowski’s Internationale Krimis. That ought to be especially interesting, since Herr Kochanowski writes almost exclusively in German.

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Speaking of Barbara Fister, she’s just published a new article in Library Journal wherein she suggests some ways the modern book-publishing business might overcome its crises of escalating costs and redoubling competition.

“[L]lately, it’s become clear that the book industry really does need to be saved: from itself,” Fister opines. “It might start by looking more closely at what libraries do. After all, libraries know that developing a strong book culture involves making it easy for people to discover and sample new books, to acquire books quickly even if they aren’t on the local library’s shelves, and to share their reading experiences with others. One of the most powerful reasons for choosing a book is having another reader recommend it. In short, sharing isn’t the problem. It’s the solution.”

The full piece is here.