Assignment 1: The RA Conversation
I must admit that I identify with those librarians who feel apprehensive about going up to a customer and offering your RA skills before they've asked for help. Neal Wyatt is right--it can be scary! If you are going up to someone and asking if they want a suggestion for a good book, my first thought is that they expect you to have many suggestions for good books at your arsenal. Do I have many suggestions for good books at my arsenal?? *panic* Of course not!!! But luckily, as I have learned from Neal Wyatt, RA is about much more than the end result--it's about the conversation. It was also helpful learning how to break down the RA conversation just enough to keep the reader engaged. Being able to pick out the appeal factors for books in the library sounds much easier than reading every single book in the library. Also, I'm starting to realize the best way to become good at RA is to practice, practice, practice!
Assignment 2: Nancy Pearl
The way Nancy Pearl writes her book reviews reminds me a lot of how I (try) to write my blog posts for Between the Covers. She has one paragraph of mostly summary and one paragraph of appeal factors for each book. I find it interesting that sometimes she mentions summary first and sometimes she mentions appeal factor first. My first instinct is to summarize the book first, but I could also see the benefits of introducing appeal factor first.
Assignment 3: Conversations
Conversation 1: For this customer, I would recommend Wild, by Cheryl Strayed as an engaging memoir about one woman's journey to find herself. I would also recommend The Liar's Club by Mary Karr because Mary Karr has been a mentor to many people writing memoirs because of her engaging writing style. For another insightful book that would make a good book club choice, I would recommend Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes. It is another book with an empowering female lead and could bring up a lot of good discussion since Shonda Rhimes is also well known as a tv producer.
Conversation 2: For this customer, I would recommend The Walking Dead graphic novel series. Even though it's about zombies, and not vampires, it has the fast-paced action they seem to be looking for. If the only vampire book this customer has heard about is Twilight, I might assume they are a teen reader. I would direct them to more fast-paced supernatural teen books such as The Mortal Instruments series by Cassandra Clare. It's actually kind of hard to find a vampire book without some sort of romantic/erotic spin to it. If the reader is okay with some romance, just not puppy love, I would recommend books by Anne Rice or maybe the Sookie Stackhouse series.
Conversation 3: The conversation with this customer makes me wonder how much our own personal experiences affect they type of reader's advisory we give. I just saw the movie The Perfect Storm a few weeks ago and loved it, and now I want to recommend it to everyone! If this customer enjoys real-life stories of men battling the sea, I would definitely recommend The Perfect Storm! The book is engaging, action-packed, narrative and easy to read. I tend to lean towards books that get turned into movies because I figure movies are quite expensive to make, and they would not turn a book into a movie if it did not have a great story line (what do you guys think??) Another good author for this customer would be Erik Larsen. Devil in the White City is a good true-murder-story that moves quickly and reads like fiction. I would also recommend books by David McCullough, since he writes a lot of narrative, historical non-fiction as well.
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