Week Nine: Be More Bookish Reflection Post

Be More Bookish is drawing to a close. :(

I found that keeping this blog was a helpful and fun exercise, though it was more work than I was expecting it to be. I've kept blogs before (for work and for pleasure), but some weeks seemed to take a long time to get done (or maybe that's just my perfectionist nature coming through).

I loved exploring different genres and subgenres. A fellow librarian and I even used the Fiction Genre Flowchart prezi in a readers advisory conversation with a real-live customer! (This customer usually read chick lit, and wanted to read some "adventure" fiction for the first time but didn't know what kind she was looking for. Bingo! Perfect opportunity to wield newly gained sub-genre knowledge.)

I also found the appeal characteristics work to be quite helpful. Not just in giving me more descriptive language to describe books, but in learning how to pare down a book talk from mostly summary to mostly appeal terms. I've been practicing this, too, as often as I can. I hope that it's working!

Overall it was a great experience and one that I would willingly sign up for again. :)

Week Nine: Book Trailers

Book trailers seem like such a great idea, but sadly, before this exercise, I had never really seen one that was a great hook. I did enjoy Jeanette Walls' trailers for The Glass Castle and Half Broke Horses, though. Book trailers seem to be well-suited for nonfiction titles, since tie-in footage can enhance the reader's knowledge of the topic presented.

Pamela Paul in the New York Times article Author Takes a Star Turn makes a good point about teens: as this audience matures, so may the book trailer come into it's own. In fact, YA lit may be the current best fit for the book trailer, since that audience is already largely internet-savvy and more likely to be online to view the trailers in the first place.

Still, to appeal to teens (or anyone else, for that matter) and be useful readers' advisory tools, book trailers need to be more polished than a slap-dash of stock footage. They don't have to be super-shiny or have high production costs - but they need to present a relevant and interesting visual element that enhances the future reading experience. The trailer for Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children was spooky and a great lead-in to the book. I also really enjoyed this Shatter Me trailer:

It doesn't have as many visuals as the one for Miss Peregrine's, but the music was exciting and the message was powerful. Plus, it ends just before a kiss - what a cliffhanger!

Then there's the conundrum of how to get readers to view book trailers. Just putting something on the internet does not guarantee an audience. If your readers have to seek out a book trailer, it will almost certainly be ineffective. I've watched a few on Amazon.com, since (if they exist) they are commonly placed right on the buying page (albeit buried under the cover and customer images). I've also seen a book trailer on a DVD, right in with the movie trailers. It was slick and exciting enough to compete with the movies before and after it, though unfortunately I cannot remember what book it was for... (so was it really that effective??).

Week Eight: Nonfiction Genres and Dewey Classification

Of the 16 nonfiction genres outlined in this SLRC video, I'm going to focus on Politics, Essays, Crime, and Sports and what kinds of narrative nonfiction titles can be found within these genres.

• Political nonfiction can be found in the 320's for current issues flavored with distinct political party viewpoints. For political issues of a more historical flavor (generally also more party-neutral) try the 973's. Pretty much any title here is politically charged and anything but neutral, but I tried to find one that may appeal beyond party lines. A Nation of Wusses by Ed Rendell might be a good pick for someone who normally reads fiction - he's a Democrat and not shy about saying so, but this is the politician who called the NFL a bunch of wusses over cancelling a 2010 Eagles-Vikings game.

• Essays can be found mostly in the 814's, with more humorous selections mixed into the 818's. Lies that Chelsea Handler Told Me is a great collection of humorous, anything-goes essays written by the comedic actress' friends and family.

• Narrative nonfiction relating to Crime - such as modern true crime stories, biographical takes on infamous criminals, and historical narratives of famous crimes - can be found in the 363-364's. Flawless: Inside the Largest Diamond Heist in History by Scott Andrew Selby and Greg Campbell is a great title for crime thrill-seekers.

• Sports-related nonfiction can be found in the 796's. Friday Night Lights by H.G. Bissinger is a great title for sports fans and readers of small-town fiction.

As a caveat, I should also say that pretty much all of these genres are also represented in the Biographies section if the work has a more general approach to the life of its subject.

----------------------------------


Friday Night Lights by H.G. Bissinger is another book that I would find easy to recommend. For one thing, it's the basis of a popular television show (and was also made into a movie). It's a story of everyday failures and triumphs, with plenty of exciting football action to keep things moving along at a riveting pace. I'd recommend this book to sports fans - both ESPN and Sports Illustrated highly recommend the book as a good football story - as well as readers who are interested in engaging characters and suspenseful, realistic fiction set in a small town.



Flawless by Scott Andrew Selby and Greg Campbell is definitely a title I would recommend. Well-researched and highly detailed, this true crime story takes readers around the globe as it follows the skilled group of theives known as "The School of Turin." It's a gripping story with a big, cinematic feel - definitely a fast-paced read and a vicarious thrill for readers. I'd recommend it to fans of Crime Fiction or Thrillers.

 

----------------------------------

Week Eight: Nonfiction Appeal

In Borderlands: Crossing between Fiction and Nonfiction in Readers' Advisory crossover between fiction and narrative nonfiction is highlighted. I find that for myself, I tend to stick to narrative nonfiction more often than not. I am particularly drawn to memoirs, often covering topics that I wouldn't find particularly appealing in fiction (such as the emotional journey of Elizabeth Gilbert in Eat, Pray, Love). Why is that? I guess I like the "this happened to a real person!" factor, but without that factor I need some other appealing hook to pique my interest.

Catherine Sheldrick Ross, in her article Reading Nonfiction for Pleasure: What Motivates Readers?, poses the question: "Do [readers] experience the two kinds of reading very differently, for example, by turning to fiction when they want a pleasurable experience but choosing nonfiction when they want to find out facts about the real world?" For myself, at least, it's almost always both. Even in the humorous farce of a Carl Hiaasen novel, I enjoy learning about Floridian culture. And gems like Awkward Family Pet Photos provide some measure of truth (mostly about how weird people are, especially those who take portraits with their pets...) but at the same time it's a laugh riot, certainly a pleasurable experience.

 

I suppose you could say that the pace is different, and the degree of continuity can also be different (following the plot of a novel vs. digesting sometimes only loosely related bits of information). But I like my fiction and nonfiction reads to be pleasurable and informative, and I think there are a lot of other readers who feel the same.

Week Seven: Not Just for Teens III

In this concluding chapter in my YA-focused trilogy of posts, here's a follow-up on the two blogs I started following for last week's assignment:

Stacked

Stacked is written by two public librarians, Kimberly Francisco and Kelly Jensen. Book reviews, reading lists, and links of note are some of their recurring features, with an occasional academic/professional-type article thrown in. I would have to say that their audience may more likely be adults who read teen novels or other librarians, simply because of the high-level of some of their articles. Also, their format, while crisp and pleasing, is more professional than other glitzy teen-centric sites I've seen (like last week's LB Teen).

Is this a successful blog? It's hard to tell, but there are never too many comments on their posts (excepting Kelly Jensen's Female Sexuality in YA Fiction: Exploring the Range of Experiences, which has amassed a whopping 24 comments so far). I'm certainly enjoying it, though, and I hope they keep it up.

Teen Reads

A flashier site than Stacked, Teen Reads' content is provided by Bookreporter writers and it seems geared towards actual teenage readers. The polls are fun and quirky. They've got a "He Said/She Said" feature and another for "Adult books you want to read." That all suggests a younger audience.

Teen Reads is fairly successful in the getting-a-large-audience category: their main banner touts their 7,500 Facebook fans (not to mention their Twitter and YouTube followers). As an offshoot of Bookreporter, Teen Reads also benefits from the larger site funnelling in readers.