On the Sly Librarian

Earlier this week, I went to an Ipsos Insight breakfast session on their newly available business elite service. It was held at the Yale Club of New York City, and the venue -- which has been located near Grand Central Terminal since 1915 -- is really what attracted me to the event. After all, when invited to the halls of power, go.

After the breakfast, I went to the top floor to the dining room to use the restroom and check out the eating area. Then I went downstairs to the second floor to see the lounge. And before I left, I went back up to the fourth floor to explore the library. While I didn't have much chance to examine the collection closely, I did make the rounds, scanning the shelves -- and I picked up the September 2007 acquisition list on my way out.

How many private or membership-serving libraries are there like this? Do publishers and authors target them as audiences? The Yale Club has a speaker series, and it seems like a good way to get a text in front of an influential audience.

Because the acquisitions list online is about a year out of date, I'll post some of the more recent highlights here:

• Ian Ayres, Super Crunchers: Why Thinking-by-Numbers Is the New Way to Be Smart
  
• Bill Clinton, Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World
  
• Alan Greenspan, The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World
  
• Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
  
• Vince Poscente, The Age of Speed: Learning to Thrive in a More-Faster-Now World
  
• Alan Weisman, The World Without Us
  

Lighter reading is also available:

• Garrison Keillor, Pontoon
  
• Katie Roiphe, Uncommon Arrangements: Seven Portraits of Married Life in London Literary Circles 1910-1939
  
• J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book 7)
  

I wish they made their acquisitions list more public more often. Even the Global Business Network's book club is languishing. Harrumph.