Online Resource of the Month: Books, Movies & More E-mail Newsletters

As we approach the end of December 2020, the Lincoln City Libraries in Lincoln, NE don't want to miss the opportunity to point out that our Online Resource of the Month this month has been our Books, Movies & More E-mail newsletters -- a wealth of Readers Advisory recommendations online.

For several years now, the Lincoln City Libraries have made use of a service called BookLetters to provide a wide variety of booklist-formatted newsletters, which anyone can subscribe to receive in their e-mail. At present, there are over 30 newsletters available to subscribe to. Many come pre-packaged from the BookLetters company, in a standardized format, and several are custom-created by Lincoln City Libraries' staff members.

All books featured in all newsletter issues include "Check Our Catalog" links you can click, to check on the availability of titles, and/or to place holds in our on-line catalog. All books in all newsletters also feature "More Info" links, so you can see a more-detailed description of each title.

Our two most popular newsletters are New Books on Order, and New DVDs, which give you a monthly sampler of titles we think are going to be popular in next few months -- place holds on hot new titles before most customers are even aware the books are coming out! Or check out the "custom newsletters" at the end of this list, in which various library staff from throughout Lincoln give you their personal reading, listening and viewing recommendations, with their own personal commentaries!

If you're still not convinced, and would like to sample just one single newsletter before subscribing to more, may we recommend Book Sizzle -- it is a weekly newsletter that includes special focuses on hot topics in the news, recent award announcements, and highlights from (and links to) several of the 30+ other newsletters that you can connect to without subscribing to them directly. One stop shopping, so to speak!

Here's a list of the currently-available newsletters for subscribers:

Pre-packaged: (mostly monthly -- anywhere from 4 or 5 to as many as 25 new titles in each issue!)

Audiobooks
Business
Children's Chapter Books
Children's Picture Books
Fiction Adventure
Lifestyles
Mystery
New DVDs
New Fiction
New Non-Fiction
Past and Present (Biographies and General Non-Fiction History)
Romance
Science Fiction & Fantasy
Science and Nature
Teen Scene

BookLetters Daily (an in-depth look at one specific book each day, Mon-Fri, including a selection of both fiction and non-fiction titles) 

Fiction Best-Sellers (weekly)
Non-Fiction Best-Sellers (weekly)

Here are the customer or specialized newsletters our staff work on:

New Books on Order (monthly - duplicates the list you see on display at library check-out desks) 

New Large Type Books on Order (same but with a focus on LT titles) 

Book Club Choices (monthly recommendations of titles appropriate for book club discussions) 

One Book - One Lincoln (lists associated with this annual event) 

Adult Programs and Events (lists associated with other adult programming in the libraries) 

Family Fare (news and book recommendations for families) 

What's Cooking (new cookbooks) 

Isn't That Movie a Book? (book tie-ins to movie and TV releases)

Here are the newsletters that take on a "book column" format, from various library staff: (some monthly, some on a less-regular schedule)

Customer Snapshot (each issue profiles a different library customer and their reading suggestions)

The Heritage Room Newsletter (news and book announcements from the Jane Pope Geske Heritage Room of Nebraska Authors, located on the 3rd floor of the downtown library) 

Polley Music Library Picks (new music books, and other music news from the Polley Music Librarian) 

Lisa V.'s Book Crave (themed reading recommendations from Lisa at Eiseley Branch, a reader with eclectic tastes) 

It's All Geek to Me! (themed reading recommendations from Scott at the downtown library, a self-avowed "reading geek") 

Susan's Speculations (themed reading recommendations from Teen specialist Susan at Eiseley Branch) 

The Women of Walt (themed reading recommendations from a rotating group of Walt Branch staff, each with different reading interests)

Subscription Page -- Click here to go to our page where you can subscribe to any/all of the available newsletters. You can also see the latest issue of all available newsletters by clicking on their titles on this page. If you wish to subscribe, simply check the boxes next to the newsletters you're interested in, and at the bottom of the page, enter your current valid e-mail address in the entry box, and click the Subscribe button. You'll start receiving new issues of each newsletter as they are published.

Back Issues Page -- We are able to keep a back-issue archive of some of the "custom" newsletter we produce, and you'll find them by clicking on this page, where you can see issues going back several years.

It's all free to you as a customer of the Lincoln City Libraries -- all you need is a current, active e-mail account to receive the content. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Book Review: Dot.Con: The Art of Scamming a Scammer by James Veitch

Dot.Con: The Art of Scamming a Scammer
by James Veitch (817 Vei)

British comedian James Veitch set himself the task of actually replying, positively, to all the scam e-mails he received — Nigerian princes wishing to have help moving large sums of money out of their country, beautiful Russian women seeking companionship, desperate “friends” stuck overseas and needing a loan to be able to return home, and so many more. This book compiles the chains of e-mails back-and-forth between Veitch and several of the scammers, in which Veitch played cat-and-mouse with them, teasing that he was going to give them what they wanted, only to back out after many, many e-mails were shared and responded to.

Veitch is dryly humorous, and the shtick of leading the scammers on is initially funny, but eventually becomes something of a one-note theme. None-the-less, this volume is definitely entertaining, and provided the vicarious thrill of watching him waste enormous amounts of the time these scumbags would have otherwise spent stealing the money of those gullible enough to fall for their malarkey. A fun, light read…just don’t expect any depth from it.

[ official James Veitch web site ]

Recommended by Scott C.
Bennett Martin Public Library – Public Service

Have you read or listened to this one? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?

New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide Blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewer’s recommendations!

Lincoln City Libraries' On-Line Book Clubs

Do you subscribe to one or more of the On-Line Book Clubs offered by the Lincoln City Libraries?

You can have portions of books -- from 12 different categories or genres -- sent to your e-mail every Monday through Friday. By the end of the week, you'll have received 2 to 3 chapters' worth of recent and readable books -- enough that you can decide whether you want to track down the entire book(s) here at the library or at a bookstore.

The On-Line Book Clubs are a product of DearReader, and the current categories are: Fiction, Mystery, Romance, Science Fiction, Non-Fiction, Good News, Thriller, Business, Pre-Publication, Audiobooks and Classics. There's also a Teen Books category.

Visit our On-Line Book Clubs page for more information, and to see the current week's selections in all categories, and follow the on-screen instructions to sign up today!