yikes. looking at this blog 6 months out, i see i should have been using spellcheck.

"To read is to engage in an act of imaginative personalization..." Ripped right from the Chicago Tribune article, it's a thought which illustrates why I don't look at book trailers. My own imagination is all I need. Of course, I rarely watch movies and fall asleep in the theatre but I can stay up all night reading, so while book trailers don't work for me, they probably do work for the legion of folks who don't view books and tv/movies as mutually exclusive. If a trailer piques the interest of a viewer who then picks up the book, I say hooray!  Sort of a lid for every pot kind of thing. Besides, didn't we used to do something similar at BCPL?  We had booktalks, or subject talks, with BCPL staff on our webpage. I don't view Reader's Advisory as a one size fits all scenario--we have all kinds of tools at our disposal, and book trailers can be a useful addition in the right scenario.

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In summary, I enjoyed working through this training, but several of the assignments took me more than two hours to complete...and I considered myself already decently versed with RA tools. My favorite assignment was #8 which will prompt me to augment RA fiction encounters with  non-fiction choices when appropriate; I especially liked thinking about appeal factors from a non-fiction angle. The Goodreads assignment was both fun and educational---already a sporadic Goodreads user, I was pleasantly surprised by the tips  I picked up during this assignment and have used Listopia as a resource for suggestions.

The articles about narrative non-fiction helped me think critically about the genre. I liked making the distinction between narrative and information-based non-fiction, and evaluating this genre with appeal factors dealing with setting, character development, storyline, and creation of suspense will prompt me to mix up fiction and non-fiction recommendations in RA encounters.

Dewey Areas

Bio/Memoir: at BCPL, most often found in the BIO section, though memoirs can be by Dewey subject sometimes. Recommend The Memory Palace by Mira Bartok.

History: at home in the 900's. WWII history is in the 940's where once finds Hitlerland: American Eyewitnesses to the Nazis Rise to Power by Andrew Nagorski.

Sports: 790's. Good narrative choice is Scoreboard, Baby: A Story of College Football, Crime, and Complicity by Ken Armstrong.

Medical: 600's. Spark: A Mother's Story of Nurturing Genius by Kristine Barnett.

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Scoreboard, Baby would be a good choice for someone who follows sports, especially college football, or someone who likes crime fiction. It looks at the University of Washington's Huskies football team which won a national championship in 2000. The author builds a case in which alumni, the athletic department, and ultimately the school, ignored their duty to educate students and instead, produced a dream team composed at least 24 players charged with crimes, including rape, assault, and a shooting, while at the school. If the recent news stories about corruption in college sports interest you, try this title.

Bad mothers are a perennial favorite on the fiction shelves. The Memory Palace is Bartok's memoir about life with her schizophrenic mother, whose illness progressively worsened as Bartok and her sister grew up. Eventually, due to the destructive nature of their relationship with the mother, both sisters changed their names and kept in contact with their mother via mail and a PO box; only when their mother lay dying in the hospital does Bartok return to try to make peace with her past. This book is lyrically written, and does not necessarily follow a linear timeline so I would recommend it to readers who enjoy literary fiction, less-than-happy memoirs, and have an interest in mental health issues.

 

My colleages Mercedes Mendoza and Katie Troeschel each wrote a very thoughtful post which expanded my perspective on the New Adult genre. I commented on each of their blogs.

I liked reading Stacked; it is written by librarians and based on their posts, I'd say they take reading very seriously. Their audience is probably not easily categorized, like librarian, or teen, but is probably composed of other folks across age ranges and occupations, who also take their reading seriously. That said, the bloggers at Stacked have come up with some interesting books groups/recommended reading. Bad Dads for Father's Day? check, with some truly nasty pater familias featured. Titles for the nascent feminist? check that too. :)

Teenreads is my second choice. Seems to me it is aimed squarely at teen readers, with its "ultimate reading list" and superhero powers quizzes. It's sort of a plain jane looking site, but it is easy to navigate and has scads of reviews and suggestions (albeit often so slow that I end up leaving. Maybe it's the extra traffic?)

Little,Brown for teens new books focused on dystopia, fantasy, angsty crime, action thrillers, or a combo of the previous. Sounds like an adult bestseller list... I also looked at Teens At Random and, again, dystopian fantasy looks like it isn't dying down yet.

diligently working to catch up here...

This whole New Adult discussion makes me imagine the library as a spiral tower lined with shelving spiraling upward. Board books for the youngest patrons would be at the bottom, in the beginning, and at the very top of the tower where shelving comes to an end, we'd find the books by Diana Athill and Jane Juska for the geriatric readers. New Adult would be found between Young Adult and (full-fledged?) Adult. Shelf labels by AA Milne...Now We Are 32.
 I read the Who is Buying Teen Books? and New Adult: Needless Marketing...articles, and some of the blogs, too. New Adult seems to be an ambiguous category; does it mean more sex than YA? Lots of crossover appeal? 19-25 yr old characters? Angst about getting launched? I think it's great that the teen market has exploded the way it has and am not surprised about the crossover. I just don't see it as a new genre but instead, a marketing and merchandising technique which certainly has its own merit. Wow! to the LPL flowchart--I liked the way it was organized, and enjoyed seeing all the subgenre suggestions.

The sites I'm following for this assignment are Stacked for its plethora of links to external articles and videos on the topics it raises, and Teenreads since it contains lots of book reviews. Be back at the end of the week. :)

Street Fiction is my genre site; it is as useful to me as The Daily Beast, but in a different way. Unlike the DB's emphasis on what's new, Street Fiction functions more like an educational resource and an indexing of street lit. The site includes some fairly narrow sub-types; you can search for books based on "place" (Baltimore has its own list) or subject matter, such as addiction. It covers more than the stereotypical urban fiction grittiness and includes a section for Christian fiction. Despite its name, Street Fiction also covers non-fiction, includes articles on the history of the genre, and recommends books for additional reading about urban literature.

The subgenres which I've explored are Science Fiction Cyberpunk,  Contempory Westerns, and Christian Romance. I was able to find a number of sites (via googling)  discussing cyberpunk (like this one ) but nothing with much in the way of "fan buzz," much less talk of new books.   I think all of the sites I visited mentioned Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson as a classic of the genre and no wonder, since it dates from 1992. The book features computer technology (as opposed to steam power which is steampunk,) a highly networked society, very often a dystopian setting, and oppression of the individualistic hero by the techno system (as opposed to the "man" of the 1960's, i guess.)

In checking out Contemporary Westerns, I liked looking at the info and list on the Monroe County Library System with links to a number of other Western websites and prize pages, including theWilla Awards. Contemporary westerns are characterized by an emphasis on places and relationships rather than "cattle-herding and gunplay," and  a de-romanticized view of the era. In looking at various websites, and lists on places like Goodreads, the term Contemporary Western doesn't seem to have a universal meaning, as I found books which take place in the western US, books which take place on ranches in current times, and books that are bodice-rippers involving cowboys...all on someone's idea of "contemporary western." I prefer this timely Daily Beast article on the Modern Western and lists Cormac McCarthy and Larry McMurtry as solid writers in the subgenre. Ivan Doig's books, like Worksong,  are probably a pretty good choice for an intro to contemporary Western, as the books are set in the traditional time and place, and have the flavor of the Old West, but with terrific character development and storylines that aren't limited to horses and sagebrush.

Lastly, I explored Christian Romance. I was easily able to find more blogs devoted to this subgenre, and it struck me that both readers and authors are very earnestly trying to read and/or write books in which the characters are not perfectly saccharine-sweet, but struggle with their failings and work hard to abide by their faith. No bad words and no sexual activity (one author has a 2-kiss rule) need apply. Sisters of Mercy Flats by Lori Copeland is a new book garnering postive reviews.

Coming up with crossovers was fun. One of my favorite genre-benders has to be Patrick deWitt's The Sisters Brothers. Set in the Wild West, two brothers, contract killers, ride their horses to California in search of a man their employer has sent them to assasinate. It's a western, it's a suspense thriller, it's about psychopaths... and it is unique. Paranormal romance, horror, and fantasy combine in the Darkfever series by Karen Moning. Lots of sexual tension between  MacKayla and her non-human mentor Jericho, and plenty of icky gore, teletransportation, and non-human races.

I follow The Daily Beast which is a great resource for for new titles, both those which look interesting, and those which look like they might be the next "hot" read. DB also contains in-depth articles and interviews, as well as significant sample excerpts. 

Create an adult fiction popular titles list for Randallstown in CollectionHQ and the titles and authors which appear are the typical bestsellers like Harlen Coben, Nora Roberts and whatever title is the hoppin' in the news, like Gone Girl. Unlike some other branches, African-American interest titles generate a lot of interest here and also show up on the popular list. EarlyWord is great to see what what's hot now, what's heating up, and I love the all the links to external sites (everything you ever wanted to know about books but were afraid to ask,) especially the Awards list/links. I visit EarlyWord regularly, but this training reminded me just how vast the site's resources are.

My guess for the summer's must read?  The Shining Girls is prominently placed on EarlyWord, The Huff Post's top 30 reads, and on The Daily Beast. Serial killers, time travel, psychologically creepy--sounds like a combo of perennial best-selling fast-paced thrillers with a dose of the literary. It could have a broad cross-appeal, and readers of the imaginitively written The Time Traveler's Wife and The Night Circus might be interested in it as readers of Nicci French or Harlen Coben.