Don’t Forget About Reading Maps!

It’s Spring Cleaning time on both blogs. Last week I cleaned up the resources page on the horror blog, and today, I went through an old but very useful page that is always available from every page here on the blog-- The Reading Maps archive. As you can see from this zoomed out picture of the right gutter, the Reading Maps link is lives under the heading of “Pages.”

Below I have reposted the entire page here as a blog post so as to remind all of you to check out these excellent resources. While at first glance, these appear to merely be “backlist gems,” I want to point out that there is are reading map to some very current titles such as, American Gods, George R. R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series, and The Walking Dead. Also, I just suggested Big Stone Gap to someone this very morning. Hey it was new to her. See, the backlist is always very helpful; it never lets us down. But if you have been a reader of this blog for any length of time, you already knew that.

On a personal note, going through this archive and checking the links was like a walk down memory lane. The vast majority of these were done by my students, many of whom have become colleagues over the years. Looking back on this, some of their first professional RA work, made me even more proud of them.

Here is the direct link to the Reading Maps page, but I have also posted it below with the live links.

If you or your library has some online reading maps that you want to share with a wider audience [so as to help more readers], contact me and I will add them to the page, with credit to you. The more reading maps we gather together, the more readers we can help. It’s all about the compound interest of many RA library workers banding together and sharing the load.

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Reading Maps

Please note that all reading maps are based on this article by Neal Wyatt in Library Journal (11/2006).  From that article:

"Reading maps are web-based visual journeys through books that chart the myriad associations and themes of a title via other books, pictures, music, links to web sites, and additional material. Reading maps open up the world of the book for the reader by diagramming the internal life of the book, allowing readers to inhabit the text and its outward connections, and enabling readers to follow threads of interest that stem from any particular part of the work."

While this archive is no longer being added to, the links were last check in April, 2017.

The information, readalikes, and ideas these pages will generate are not bound by time, however. So get clicking.

Berwyn Public Library Reading Maps at the Browsers Corner:

• Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith
• Before I Go to Sleep by S.J. Watson
• Death Comes to Pemberley by P.D. James
• The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
• Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
• Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
• The Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins
• Killing Floor (and the rest of the Jack Reacher series) by Lee Child
• The Millennium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson
• The Queen of the Damned by Anne Rice
• Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
• A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin
• A Test of Wills by Charles Todd

Student Examples of Note:

• The Watchmen by Michelle K.
• A Great and Terrible Beauty by Sarah
• Sookie Stackhouse by Christine
• Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Russ
• Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Cris
• Shop Class As Soulcraft by Jason
• Big Stone Gap by Jessica
• The National Parks by Elizabeth
• American Gods by Amanda
• Sharp Teeth by Val
• Her Fearful Symmetry by Dorsey
• The Hangman's Daughter by Liz
• Moveable Feast by Noelle
• The Lost Dogs by Laura
• Walking Dead by Cassie
• Just Kids by Lian
• Alice in Wonderland by Jenn
• The Warmth of Other Suns by Jeanne
• Outlander by Joe
• Listening is an Act of Love by Elaine
• The Great Gatsby by Christina
• Galway Bay by Sara
• The Master and Margarita by Dan
• The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by Meg
• The Hunger Games Trilogy by Christi
• The Black Rose by Jess
• Girl With a Pearl Earring by Elizabeth
• Gone With the Wind by Cheryl
• The Language of Baklava by Noelle
• The Book Thief by Amanda
• Bel Canto by Liz
• The Art of Racing in the Rain by Caitlin
• Time Traveler's Wife by Margita
• An Abundance of Katherines by Elizabeth
• Doc by Jessica
• The Madonnas of Leningrad by Becky K. (not me)
• The Poisoner's Handbook by Nicole
• Eat, Pray, Love by Vera