"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.

Last week's assignment turned out to be more fun than I was anticipating. Even though I've been a goodreads member for a while, I'm not much of a listkeeper and rarely used it. Thanks to this training, I played around with some of goodread's tools and found a few which will be useful for reader's advisory at work, and some others that were interesting to me personally. Too much time was spent using the "compare books with a friend" feature  and sorting friends' books by their ratings, especially with all my *new* BCPL friends, and I found it easy to add new books using the "continuing rating more books" feature which brings up scads of suggestions.  I see as especially useful the general book lists and "readers who liked this book also liked" list associated with a specific title when a customer wants books suggestions based on a title he or she has read in the past.

Based on Rodney Campbells' goodreads lists of books, I recommeded he try The Feud which is a non-fiction choice about the most famous warring families in America...the Hatfields and the McCoys. Rod seems to enjoy both  true crime and history, as well as books where the setting is integral to the story. In this instance, the mountains of West Virginia and Kentucky are as much a part of the story as the families, and author Dean King has produced a well-researched and detailed acount of the decades-long conflict.

I heard customer #1 saying that she enjoyed Eat, Pray, Love most of all for its introspective tone and chronicling of self-growth leavened with humor; as such, I’d recommend she try Anne Lamott’s books, especially Traveling  Mercies which is Lamott’s very honest, and sometimes quite funny, accounting of her spiritual journey.  Since #1 was also drawn to the foreign locale in Gilbert’s book, she might like  Alice Steinbach’s Without Reservations in which Steinbach writes of her travels in Europe whilst rediscovering herself.

Before I’d offer customer #2 some ideas, I’d have to ask another question or two to determine if she didn’t like Twilight because it was too fluffy…or too serious. If she was looking for a more literary vampire read, I’d suggest Elizabeth Kostova’s The Historian which takes a more scholarly, and, well, historical, approach combined with the suspense of a dark and gradually unfolding thriller.  If she is looking for more action without the angst, I’d direct her to the Sookie Stackhouse series, which are fast-paced books with plenty of fighting, plot twists, and sexy encounters rather than angsty drawn-out romance.

Customer #3 sounds likes she enjoys non-fiction outdoor adventure and history, so I’d offer her Shadow Divers by Robert Kurson; it’s the exciting story of two recreational scuba divers who discover an WWII u-boat sunk off the New Jersey coast and then, with repeated perilous dives, try to solve the mystery of the identification of this uncharted wreck. I’d also tell her about Manhunt, James Swanson’s account of chasing down John Wilkes Booth, which reads like a thriller.  

I read alot and have a constant "well, if you liked XXX, you should try YYY," litany running through my brain so it was tough for me to decide whom to grace with my recommendations. Kate Sigler, my lovely new Randallstown co-worker, ended up being the  lucky recipient of my largesse. Check out Kate's cleverly named blog at Bmore Bookish where you can also see my choices for her.

Native American author Louise Erdrich draws upon her heritage in The Round House. Set on a North Dakota reservation, the boundaries and buildings of the tribal grounds provide the essential framework for this novel of a Chippewa teen investigating a brutal attack on his mother. Well-defined characters are rounded out with descriptions of Indian customs and traditions and the story unfolds at a deliberate pace as Joe and his buddies zero in on the culprit.

Vanessa Michael Monroe stars in a tautly written and fast-paced series written by Taylor Stevens. In The Doll, Information Specialist Monroe takes on a creepy human trafficker in this grim tale dealing with a dark underworld organization with an international reach. A clipped writing style and rapidly alternating perspectives contribute to the urgent feel of this crime thriller.

Looks like ten full years of being a stay-at-home mom has paid off as I aced the Sporcle quiz on children's book covers. The general covers, not so much. The six year old guessing the classics bit was so painfully tedious that I stopped reading by page two. Also, I am tired today since Sporcle's vast array of addictive quizzes (books! movies! geography! i am a nerd!) kept me up way too late last night.

My new library home is Randallstown. When I worked at Towson, street or urban fiction was a genre for which customers regularly requested help in locating the collection as well as asking about new titles and authors, and I find myself in the same scenario here at the RA branch. So, I’m happy to choose Urban Fiction as my genre, using the resource Street Fiction which includes sub-genres as well as some history on the development of urban fiction and resources for librarians. As a Between the Covers blogger, I like to think that I stay abreast of new books and already visit most of the book links suggested but The Daily Beast site is new to me so that’s the one I’ll follow for this assignment.

assignment complete. :)