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.

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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.

 

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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.

Week Seven: Not Just for Teens II

I'll be following Stacked from this week onward. I just can't resist a tagline that includes mayhem. :) I'll also be following Teenreads. Check back in a week for my reviews of these sites!

This week, I also took a look at the Teen/Penguin Young Readers and the Little, Brown Books for Teens sites. Here's what I found and what was trending:

The Penguin Young Readers site had some pretty cool "minisites" for its hot titles/series, including No Safety in Numbers, Matched, and Across the Universe. Lots of little worlds to get lost in there. They also have a "most viewed books" feature, which shows that realistic teen fiction is still popular, despite the glut of paranormal titles on the market: the paperback release of Sarah Dessen's What Happened to Goodbye, and The Disenchantments by Nina LaCour comprised 50% of the four books included.

I like that the look of the Little, Brown site mimics the look of tumblr, all dynamic chaos with shiny images/teasers linking to the main article content. Lots of books being turned into movies over on LB Teen, too, including Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor. Also found a lot of teen series, and plenty of new titles released by authors of already-published bestsellers, such as Icons by Margaret Stohl (coauthor of the Beautiful Creatures books).

Week Seven: Not Just for Teens

Okay, first impression of Lawrence Public Library's flowchart on what to read next? They've really got a bead on my to-read list. I just started Scott Westerfeld's Uglies, apparently I have been "living under a rock." Zing for LPL!

The LPL's flowchart also highlights the incredible boom in YA paranormal and dystopian fiction, which was also mentioned in the article "The Next Big Thing" on the YALSA Hub as part of YA's crossover appeal. Personally, I think this is a major (if not the major) reason why adults are reading so much YA. Vampires, werewolves, zombies, cyborgs: all sorts of monsters are being given the romanticized, YA makeover. And if you're interested in the paranormal but not gratuitous gore? YA titles will fill the bill.

Crossover appeal from television shows like Gossip Girl and The Vampire Diaries, another big lure mentioned in the YALSA Hub article, seems like it's also still pulling in audiences. With TV shows, fans can follow long, slow-building series, experiencing in detail the world of a favorite cast of characters - why not read a book series and get the same effect? That's definitely something which YA has going for it: a seething multitude of series and trilogies with imaginative world-building aplenty. Seriously, it seems like every book on my to-read list (and LPL's flowchart) spawns a sequel or two before I can even get the first one read. It's definitely a series-lover's market.

"New Adult: Needless Marketing-Speak Or Valued Subgenre?" on the Publishers Weekly site focuses on the New Adult genre, and the overlap between YA and Adult markets. It discusses, in part, the difficulty that bookstores face when finding the right location in their stores for New Adult and other crossover YA titles. Which makes me wonder, where can/should we put them in the library?

Week Six: Genre Mashups

Dare I mention Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith? Literary romance meets zombie horror fiction. Pretty much what's on the box and the archtype for mashups: this is literally Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, with zombies grafted in. This is the book that inspired a thousand remakes, just see Android Karenina or Little Vampire Women.

For a purely original take, there's Andrew P. Mayer's steampunk superheroes in The Society of Steam trilogy (The Falling Machine, Hearts of Smoke and Steam, and Power Under Pressure). The books take place in an alternate 19th century New York protected by the "gentlemen adventurers," the Society of Paragons and populated with megalomaniacal villans, mechanical men, and clockwork mechanisms galore. The books' heroine, Sarah Stanton, follows a superhero-like character arc, wrestling with many moral choices given the chance to discover the hero within herself.



Kermit T. Bond [source]



Week Six: Sub-Genres, Ahoy!



Culinary Capers

Culinary capers = cozy mysteries for foodies. Fans of this genre are looking for lighthearted mysteries with a plucky main character who uses his/her sleuthing skills to solve the crime (which is generally not a particularly gory one). The hallmark of this genre is that major plot points are usually related to food (the main character is a chef, a food critic, a candy-shop owner, etc. and is deeply involved in the world of food) or the story may be set in a restaurant/bakery/cafe. They may also include real recipes that tie-in to the plot for readers to experience the story in a real-life setting (without all the dead bodies, of course). They are largely written in series, which means that each book is a fast-paced read with a series-long character arc for the main characters.


Check out all twelve titles in the Coffeehouse
Mysteries series by Cleo Coyle.



It was a bit difficult to find a fansite, per se, of only this particular niche. Google searches turned up many lists of popular culinary mysteries (including the more general Cozy Mystery Blog which had a "where to start"-type entry on these so-called culinary capers). 

Eventually, through trolling some author websites whose nom de plume's I found on the more general reading list sites listed above, I did come up with a multi-author recipe and book blog that may fit the bill: Mystery Lovers Kitchen. Big name culinary mystery writers contribute to the blog, including Cleo Coyle (of The Coffeehouse Mysteries series), Krista Davis (of the Domestic Diva series), and Lucy Berdette (of the Key West Food Critic series). And their recipes are... to die for! (Please pardon the pun - must be all these cozy mystery titles!)

It seems that fans of this genre are buzzing about food, food, food! It's not much of a surprise, but culinary caper fans love to read about new recipes, almost as much (it seems) as the love to pick up the latest title in a favorite on-going series. Right now, seasonal foods are on fans' minds (picnic-ready chicken salad, and summery peach cobbler are some of the newest recipe entries on the Mystery Lovers Kitchen blog) as well as the newest Key West Food Critic title, Topped Chef. The author, Lucy Berdette, just wrapped up her book tour during which she met the real chef who inspired one of her characters and ate some of his fabulous cooking. Yum!

Steampunk

Steampunk seems to be trending lately, so it's no wonder that there are many, many, many, many fansites to choose from. Coming at the tail-end of the Industrial Revolution, with the sentiments of the Victorian Era, proto-steampunk writers Jules Verne and H.G. Wells were crafting visions of the future based on the technologies of their present. Later writers tend to look backward to an alternate past: what would the world have looked like if steam-power had remained the dominant power source? William Gibson and Bruce Sterling's 1990's novel The Difference Engine, is a major work in the genre, paving the way for modern writers such as Phil and Kaja Foglio (authors of the Agatha Heterodyne books and the ongoing webcomic series Girl Genius) and Cherie Priest (author of the Clockwork Century Novels).

Steampunks - models Liza James and Jared Axelrod
on board Baldwin 60000 by Kyle Cassidy

Stories that fall into the steampunk genre tend to feature mad scientists, steam-powered machines, and dystopian worlds. They are high on the 'what if?' end of the sci-fi spectrum, yet they mostly are set in the re-imagined past, generally in the Victorian Era. The plots - and world-building - can get highly detailed, but they are also by-and-large adventure stories with high stakes, dashing heroes, and dastardly villains. There tends to be some crossover with mystery, especially of the Sherlock Holmsian, "art of detection" variety. Typical characters include the aforementioned mad scientists as well as hosts of mechanics, detectives, airship pilots, thieves and ruffians, lady adventurers, and steam-powered automatons. Steampunk can be a rollicking jaunt through a clockwork world, but it can also take a a more philosophical tone, proposing what-ifs of a sinister variety. Either way, expect the writing to be clever, the plots to be full of twists and turns... and the engines to be steamy.
More than a literary genre: steampunk has also become a lifestyle. Do you want to go to a convention to mingle with like-minded steampunk fans? Try SteamCon, or the Steampunk World's Fair. Do you want to investigate steampunk art, steampunk music, or steampunk fashion? Well you're in luck: The Steampunk Empire is a great place to explore all aspects of the subculture at once. There are oodles of internet rabbit holes to fall down. In fact, I found it to be a bit of a challenge just to narrow down my choices.

Starting at the "Know Your Meme" page for Steampunk, I was able to find lots of different angles on the genre, including the literary-bent blog Steampunk.com which I'll use as my main example of a fansite. Steampunk.com covers television shows, events, news and more but what drew me in was its monthly feature article on what's new in books. The coolest article has to be the loosely-termed "steampunk" Legos: yes, please! Fans of steampunk are definitely into inventive building techniques with a high empasis on personalized craftsmanship and intricate design. May releases of steampunk novels included The Havoc Machine by Stephen Harper (the latest in his Clockwork Empire series).

Hard Boiled

The third sub-genre that I investigated were hard-boiled mysteries (also referred to as "pulp fiction," or "film noir" in tv and movies), in which the men will be wise guys, and the dames will be femme fatales. According to TVTropes, the trope of the hard-boiled detective character is a "tough, cynical guy with a gun and a lot of Street Smarts, who solves mysteries with dogged persistence rather than astounding insight." [source] The mise-en-scene of this type of story is gritty and atmospheric, while the narration tends to be first-person monologue. These read at a fairly fast clip, no matter how quickly or leisurely the mystery unfolds, due to the prominent use of short sentences and pithy metaphors.

Chandler's detective Philip Marlowe is a classic example
of the hard-boiled detective. [source]

Finding a fansite for hard-boiled mysteries was a breeze. I went on good-old Goodreads and looked under groups, narrowing it down to "Books & Literature," then further into "Mystery & Thrillers." Unfortunately, that was the deepest level of detail, so from there I scanned the list of groups that came up and found the Pulp Fiction Group. Bingo.

The group is mainly a reading group, choosing a new (or classic) hard-boiled mystery to read each month. June 2013's read is Grifter's Game by Lawrence Block. Discussion on the group's boards brought up "The Magic of Pulp Fiction," a recent article on the genre by big-name author Walter Mosley, best known for his Easy Rawlins stories.

Raymond Chandler is a is a classic author in the genre, while Sue Grafton's "alphabet mysteries" series, nearing the end of its 26-book run - with W is for Wasted to be released later this year - features a female hard-boiled detective, Kinsey Milhone. Other authors include Mickey Spillane and his Mike Hammer books. Stephen King also has a new book coming out in the noir genre, Joyland, which is generating some decent buzz.

Week Six: Genre Education

Assignment 1:

Since Week One, I've been following RT Book Reviews, a great source for news on the Romance genre (and its sub-genres and sub-sub-genres). Last week, I mentioned that I haven't yet checked out any new books based on my perusal of RT Book Reviews, but I have found some useful information there. And hopefully in the future I'll find the time to sit down and delve into some of the interesting books I found there. Someday...

In the meantime, RT Book Reviews has introduced me to the vast world of Romance genres, including the "new" genre of New Adult (which Beth covered in Between the Covers, earlier this month). It falls, in RT's classification, as a sub-genre of Young Adult, and has crossover appeal to both teen and adult readers. The characters are older teens and young twenty-somethings, figuring out college, jobs, life and relationships, mostly for the first time. It might be a good sub-genre to recommend to older teen customers who ask at the information desk for the romance section, especially since our romance collections can be a bit... vast and daunting to the uninitiated. This post on Judy Blume's Forever points out that the New Adult genre is not, technically, all that new, but it's certainly seeing an upsurge in new titles published. Upcoming releases highlighted on the RT Book Reviews blog include Molly McAdams' Stealing Harper and The Lucy Variations by Sara Zarr.

RT Book Reviews follows a broader spectrum of genres than just Romance with a capital "R" (though there's plenty of that, have no doubt). Every month, there are lovely graphics pointing readers towards their next favorite book in several genres, such as this one, which features several Sci-Fi titles I'll have to put in my queue:



Science Fiction & Fantasy Book Recommendations: May 2013. RT Book Reviews © 2009 - 2013.

In addition to book reviews in a plethora of Romance sub-genres (the latest scoops on Paranormal, Inspirational, Mainstream  (aka Contemporary?) and more are at your fingertips) RT Book Reviews has an Industry Insider section with the latest publishing news. The most useful part of the site, though, is certainly the reviews and author interviews. Great way to keep on top of what's hot in the Romance world.

Week Five: Early Word

EarlyWord is definitely a keeper. As a fan of many book-to-movie titles - Never Let Me Go, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Mortal Instruments, etc. etc. - I love that EarlyWord has a strong focus on media tie-ins. And I know that customers at our branch have been gobbling up our "The Book Was Better..." display, so I'm not the only one! Lists of upcoming releases (which helpfully point blog-readers back towards our friends, the original books) and trailers for recent/upcoming movies and television shows based on books (Squee! Shakespeare as done by Joss Whedon. So psyched!) were among the many many resources aggregated by EarlyWord.


Actually, the amount of links, ads, and categories on the site is a bit daunting. The experience was just not as slick and streamlined as I prefer in a website. While on the positive side, there aren't oodles of pictures and flashy goo-gaws to slow the site down (I'm looking at you, Goodreads!), EarlyWord is still a less-than-thrilling visual experience. Navigation is also a bit tricky: I resorted to using the ubiquitous Internet Explorer "find" function to locate the bestseller lists.

Ignoring much of the sidebar material (for sanity's sake,) the blog itself is definitely one to follow. And I can see a lot of value in having a source handy which brings together so much useful information (bestseller lists, media tie-ins, upcoming releases, reviews, award winner lists, media coverage, etc. etc.)  from around the interwebs.

Week Five: A Highly Anticipated Title

Assignment 3:

 

Looking under the "Coming Soon -- Season Previews" sidebar of EarlyWord, I was intrigued by the first link listed: Flavorwire — Flavorpill’s 30 Most Anticipated Books of 2013. Looking at the "Hot Topics" across the top of the page - David Bowie, Game of Thrones, Mad Men, Daft Punk, Star Trek Into Darkness, Arrested Development - I knew I'd found something right up my alley. And, allong with some other intriguing titles to look out for, I found that Neil Gaiman will have a new book out this summer, Ocean at the End of the Lane. Awesome!

 

Gaiman's books have been some of my favorite reads - American Gods, Good Omens, the Sandman Chronicles - so, for me, the combination of 'Neil Gaiman' and 'new book' would be all the appeal words I'd need. But for the sake of the exercise, I'll do the full break down Ocean:

• Pacing:     From the reviews I've read, the newest Gaiman book is as un-put-downable as his previous works. Gripping and spellbinding are also popular descriptions. I can't tell if that makes it fast or slow paced story-wise, but in terms of reading experience, it sounds like a fast read.
• Characterization:     The characters in this story are intriguing, poignant, and carefully constructed. I'm enticed by the family of witches, the bookish narrator plunged into a horrifying ordeal, and the opal miner who commits suicide in a borrowed car, setting off the whole chain of events.
• Setting & Detail:     Set in rural England, the book has some delightfully country details: foods, for starters, like shepherd's pie and homemade custard, along with the duckpond on the farm at the end of the lane that is much more than what it seems. Nostalgic on the surface but spine-chilling in the reveal.
• Story Line:     Mixing horror on an epic, good-vs.-evil scale with fantasy and layers of emotional resonance, this is a story about memory and redemption. It's also an adventure story with a myth-arc. Hard to find one genre, but "Fantasy" is usually where mash-ups like this end up.
• Tone & Language:     Moving, hair-raising, and highly emotional. This book also has elements of a thriller, mixed with the imaginative lure of modern fantasy.  The language is compelling and lyrical. From the jacket description, the tone of the book is

  "...as delicate as a butterfly's wing and as menacing as a knife in the dark..." [source]

  It sounds lovely.
• Learning/Experiencing:     Reviewers found that while the story steps into the strange and fantastical, the experience of reading the book was an emotional one. It is a book with which the reader, through the lens of childhood memories both good and bad, can connect in a personally resonant way.

Week Five: The Book Beast and RT Book Reviews Experience

Assignment 1:

Since week one of the Be More Bookish blog challenge, I've been following both The Daily Beast's Book Beast site and RT Book Reviews.

Book Beast has already proven its worth to me, since I found out about Dan Brown's new book there (yes, apparently I have been living under a rock, as my place at #194 in the holds queue for this title might suggest). Some articles on Inferno were positive reviews (see 'Inferno': Dan's [sic] Brown's Best Book Yet by Malcolm Jones) while others were less so (such as Fact-Checking Dan Brown’s ‘Inferno’: 10 Mistakes, False Statements, and Oversimplifications by Noah Charney).  




Best Dan Brown book yet? Or nonsensical oversimplification?
Can't wait to get the book in my hands to decide for myself!

 RT Book Reviews hasn't yet garnered any new titles to read, but it was fun to follow the 2013 RT Convention coverage on their blog. Looked like a good time!



Authors signing at Avon's Red Slipper LoungeRT Book Reviews © 2009 - 2013



  

Week Four: Goodreads

Here is a link to my Goodreads page - I update it pretty often with what I'm reading. I think that I like the idea of Goodreads much better than the experience. Maybe it is because I don't have the fanciest computer or a faster-than-light internet connection, but I find Goodreads to be a slow-loading, clunky experience. I like rating books and organizing books I've read into categories, I just wish the site would stop crashing!

Listopia is one of those internet rabbit holes that sucks you in and in and in, and then you look at the clock and realize you've spent an hour looking at such gems as "Bad Boy Bikers, Rockers or Tattoo Artists." I did find it amusing that at one point, the Listopia page showed Stephanie Meyer's Twilight in two lists at once: Best Books of All Time, and Worst Books of All Time. Can't win them all, Twilight.

Explore was interesting - I even found a few new books that I want to read in their many lists, and I loved that they tailor the top results based on your personal bookshelves - but I don't think I'll be headed back soon. It just takes too long to load a full page.

For a recommendation, I used the "compare books" function with some of my new Be More Bookish Goodreads friends. Seeing that both Amber R. and I gave five stars to Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion, I recommended Breathers: a zombie's lament by S. G. Browne to her. Like Marion's novel, it gives an insider's perspective on the zombie condition, and while can be at times both gruesome and moving, it does also have an unconventional love story and is strongly character-driven. The tone is more darkly humorous than Warm Bodies, but both books have central characters who end up challenging the status quo. Both fall into the growing "Rom-zom-com" genre and are fairly smooth-flowing reads.

Week Three: RA Conversations

Conversation 1

It sounds like this customer is looking for compelling, reflective, and descriptive story - perhaps also a memoir like the book she describes, Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert - which should, ideally, also have some humor to it. She's looking for something for a book club, so it should be a book with enough substance to make a good discussion, as well. Here's what I'd pick:

Wild: from lost to found on the Pacific Coast Trail by Cheryl Strayed

• Like Eat, Pray, Love, Cheryl Strayed's travel memoir follows the author through a personal crisis, has plenty of humor, and as an added bonus, was also selected for Oprah's Book Club 2.0.

All Over the Map by Laura Fraser

• All Over the Map is also a travel memoir, this time with a focus on relationships, wanderlust, and self-discovery. It has been praised for its lush descriptions of food and foreign locales.

Conversation 2

This customer wants vampires minus teenage angst (the anti-Twilight). She's also looking for something fast-paced. Since the customer asks about reading any vampire good stories lately, I'd also be looking for books that have been published recently (or perhaps have new titles out in an ongoing series). Here's my picks:

Bloodshot by Cherie Priest

• The first installment in Cherie Priest's Cheshire Red series follows vampire and thief-for-hire Raylene Pendle as her carefully planned life gets tangled up in conspiracy theories, vampire politics, and . It's fast-paced and the narrator has several decades on Twilight's Bella, plus it's got a sequel, Hellbent, with room for more titles in the series.

Sunshine by Robin McKinley

• Sunshine takes place in the near future after vampires and other supernaturals have taken over the human world. The main character, Rae Seddon, AKA Sunshine, must pit her wits and burgeoning magical talent against a sinister group of vampires. It's a gothic-style romance in a vividly drawn urban fantasy setting that keeps readers on their toes.

Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris

• Charlaine Harris wrapped up her Southern Vampire series this month with the 13th Sookie Stackhouse book, Dead Ever After, making now a great time for readers to catch up on all of Sookie's previous murder-mystery romps. The books are quick-reads with plenty of humor, steamy romance, and authentic Southern charm.

Conversation 3

Fascinating, fast-paced, and amazing true stories are the stand out appeal terms in this customer's description of their previous read, The River of Doubt by Candace Millard. They may also like  survival stories, expedition stories, or murder mysteries, especially related to historical events or figures. I kind of want to ask this customer more questions because I feel like this could go in one of several directions, but based on just this much, I have a couple of recommends:

Devil in the White City: murder, magic, and madness at the fair that changed America by Erik Larson

• This title is another true, historical murder mystery, this time set at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893 and focusing on both on the planning and executing of the Fair as well as the grisly exploits of notorious serial-murderer H. H. Holmes. Erik Larson is a celebrated non-fiction writer, and the story is suspenseful, absorbing, and chock-full of well-researched detail.

Lost City of Z: a tale of deadly obsession in the Amazon by David Grann

• David Grann's engrossing account documents the life of Percy Harrison Fawcett, a turn-of-the-century British explorer who vanished into the Amazon jungle in 1925. Grann writes himself as narrator of the search for Fawcett (or his final resting place) in the modern day, culminating in the author's own Amazonian expedition. The setting is richly detailed in this personal search for historical truth that is both part-unsolved mystery and part-survival story.

Destiny of the Republic: a tale of madness, medicine and the murder of a president by Candice Millard

• Another book by the author of River of Doubt, Destiny of the Republic has the same attention to detail as Candice Millard's other works, with plenty of drama to keep the reader engaged. This historic narrative focuses on U.S. President James A. Garfield and the assassination attempt that ultimately took his life.

Week Three: Nancy Pearl on NPR Books and The RA Conversation

Nancy Pearl kept things short and sweet on this podcast by NPR Books. The most interesting aspect of her book recommendations was that she included her own reactions and reader experience - how she engaged with the characters or what outside pieces of her experience resonated with the story. One book had her "laughing and wincing" at its foolhardy characters, while another served up mysterious goings-on with a side helping of cold case investigation, which to her was the "frosting on the cake." She certainly gave me some books to put on my to-read shelf.

Neal Wyatt's article, "The RA Conversation," was more instructional. While I can't say that I've encountered many customers who take advantage of RA services offered as they browse, the general concepts could also apply easily to RA conversations at the desk. I found this question a particularly good one to keep in mind: "What does the reader want to get out of their reading experience?"

Week Two: Collegial Recommendations

I was intrigued by Lori H.'s book choices and recommended two books to her for the final assignment of Week 2. For her pick of The Round House by Louise Eldrich I recommended Raven Stole the Moon by Garth Stein, a suspenseful mystery with elements of Native American culture, featuring a mother returning to the site of her son's drowning to discover what really happened and come to terms with it.

For a read-alike title to compliment The Doll by Taylor Stevens, I proposed Rage Against the Dying by Becky Masterman. It's a bit of a creepy, edge-of-your-seat thriller and features a female investigator.

Week Two: Appeal Factors

Oftentimes, when I recommend a title, I'm asked "So, what's it about?" The temptation is to give a rundown of the plot while attempting to avoid spoilers (with varying degrees of success), but Neal Wyatt's article on Appeal Factors gave me a new perspective on how to describe the books I read. In fact, I found some common characteristics of the books that I most enjoy most:

• My favorite stories tend to have ensemble casts of strong, quirky characters. I don't have to like all of the characters as long as they are meaty and their actions build from character development (and not just the cardboard cutout of an archetype). Characters are my number-one priority in a story - if I can't find anything interesting about them, I just don't care about the story, no matter how many other buttons that story hits.
• I tend to enjoy the slow-building long story-arc of a series, but I definitely like a sense of forward momentum in my reading experience - in other words, something that builds slow but reads fast.
• I also like detailed settings, genre mash-ups, at least some humor in the writing. And one other thing: I'm always up for fiction that explores psychology or social issues through genre (especially through zombies - can't get enough of 'em!).

So, after thinking and pondering and reflecting on appeal factors, here's the run-down on two of my recent favorite reads based on Wyatt's seven basic appeal factors:

World War Z by Max Brooks

• Pacing:        Short chapters and multiple changes of perspective and setting keep the reading pace moving quickly, although the full picture of the plot is slower to develop.
• Characterization & Setting:        Although the jump between different characters might be unappealing to some readers, each character packs a punch – there’s no weakly developed or cardboard cut-out characters, despite how briefly they may feature in the narrative. Because of the jump between characters, there are corresponding jumps in setting – this story follows the effects of the zombie war across the globe – which is almost refreshing in the reading, because as soon as the horror creeps up on you in a certain character’s story, the reader is whisked off to another war-zone with fresh new terrors.
• Story Line:        The format is a series of realistic-style interviews with survivors of the zombie war that raise questions in the reader about morality and perception in a variety of survival situations. It’s definitely horrific in parts, so I’d call it part of the Horror or Supernatural Suspense genres, but it’s also a post-zombie apocolypse, which seems these days to be almost its own sub-genre.
• Language, Tone, & Detail:        The language and tone of the book are sober and matter-of-fact but the sprinkling of action scenes are hair-raising and adreneline charged. It’s certainly detail-heavy: any time one of the narrating characters is vague, the interviewer draws them back out to flesh out their story.
• Learning/Experiencing:        I dearly hope that I never experience anything similar to the events in this story!

 

Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas by John Scalzi

• Pacing:        I remember this as a fairly quick read, both in how I expereinced it, and how quickly the plot moved forward.
• Characterization:        The main cadre of characters are warm and share a sense of comraderie almost from their first introduction. The background characters are sometimes a bit cardboard-ish, but that plays into the story in a delicious twist.
• Story Line & Setting:        For any fans of the Star Trek universe – the story parodies the “redshirt” trope wherein the lowest-ranking (and inevitably red-uniform-wearing) crew members on any planet-side mission would invariably be killed off in dramatic fashion. The setting is an intergalactic-travelling spaceship and the story follows a group of redshirts as they uncover the conspiracy behind the high-mortality rate of their fellow crewmates, tipping their worldview right on its ear.
• Language & Tone:        John Scalzi has a wickedly sharp sense of humor, which plays out beautifully both in the parody inherent in the plot and in the character’s snappy dialog. The tone is light, despite a fairly high body count, but moments of pathos are well-deserved in the narrative and propel the plot forward.
• Detail & Learning/Experiencing:        While the story was not heavy on setting details, the slow reveal of the tightly woven conspiracy plot was like journeying with Alice down the rabbit-hole and an enjoyable experience in itself. 

Week One: Background Knowledge

A couple of fun assignments from week one of Be More Bookish Training:

First up: recognizing books by their covers. Sporcle has both an adult and children's version of this visual quiz, though there were still plenty of children's books in the adult version. On the adult book quiz, I got a respectable 18/24 and on the children's book quiz the slightly better score of 17/20. While some answers (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy or Lord of the Flies, for example (highlight text to read)) came quickly to mind, there were a few stumpers in each quiz (even ones like Bridge to Terabithia, a book I have read more than once. I even own the same edition that was used in the quiz! D'oh!).

Variations on the first: judging books by their covers. While I'm average at guessing titles, I did marginally worse at guessing genres: only 8/12 correct. I guess I need to work on the finer points of sub-genres. Taking the quiz was the first time I'd come across "Cipher" or "Techno" thrillers. And then on some questions I really wasn't sure: does a flag in the background make a book spy/espionage, or military? Does the difference between Contemporary Fantasy and Urban Fantasy lie in how many tattoos are on the character on the cover? Definitely something to explore.

New resources:
I'm choosing to follow the happenings on the Daily Beast's book blog, Book Beast. Book Beast seems like a good mix of topics and has a variety of authors contributing to the site. Additionally, I was drawn in by the presentation of the site in several different categories: the week's hot reads, articles, highlights, cheat sheet, videos etc. etc. They seem to cover both topical/popular nonfiction as well as trending/literary fiction, both genres which I am interested in exploring further.

The RT Book Reviews blog/website seems like a good introduction to the Romance genre and its various subgenres, which are not usually my choice of reads. However, the few articles I've read so far were engaging and intriguing - they might make a Romance reader of me yet! As an added plus the website itself had fewer glitches than some of the others I previewed, so that put it high on my list of possibilities.

Extra:
Why couldn't I have read this 6-year-old's version of the Great Gatsby in high school? Haunted theme parks and magical magic guys: sounds much more exciting than the original!

Welcome to Olivia's Books!

Assignment #1: Complete! I'm ready to get started with Be More Bookish training. :)