Hey kids! It's the Nancy Pearl Librarian Action Figure!

Product Features
* Modeled after real-life librarian Nancy Pearl, author of Book Lust: Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment, and Reason!

* Push-button shushing action and bonus trading card and bookmarks.

* Weapon of Choice: The Dewey Decimal System

Get yours today! And while you're at it, order up a freshly minted copy of Book Lust to Go: Recommended Reading for Travelers, Vagabonds, and Dreamers just out in paperback. I was thrilled when this book first came out because 1) I LOVE to read books that tie into my destination when I travel. And 2) I am NOT the only nerd who LOVES to read books that tie into her travel destinations!

NPR's Nancy Pearl gives a boost to some terrific under-the-radar fiction

According to librarian Nancy Pearl on NPR's Morning Edition, there's some great fiction out there just below the blockbuster bellowing radar. Among her favorites, Blood Harvest, a "spine-tingling gothic thriller" by S.J. Bolton, Under Heaven, a genre-defying historicalish kinda literary scifi/fantasy novel by Guy Gavriel Kay ("superb...gorgeously written and thoroughly researched"), and Last Night in Montreal by Emily St. John Mandel.

Pearl had picked up the freshly minted Montreal paperback at the library, then searched out ESJM's latest, The Singer's Gun...

"I've been trying to think of what metaphor to use in order to convey my experience with both these outstanding novels. To me, reading them was like watching through the lens of a camera as its focus gradually widens from a close — up shot; with each page the camera pulls farther and farther back, and we see more and more detail about how that initial view (person, event) fits in the larger picture. Or, alternatively, reading Mandel's books is akin to watching the ripples spread out from the initial "plunk" of a pebble tossed into a pond."

Click here to read/listen to the rest.