More Booktalking Resources To Help You Talk More Books

My new mantra for booktalking- and I am shouting it everywhere I go-- is:

Use the words of others when you booktalk

I outlined this new mantra in a post last month, but the gist of it is that you can use resources to find good annotated lists made by others to book talk titles to your patrons. You don’t have to have read the book to “book talk” it. You just need to talk about the book. Using the words of others open you up to so many more books to talk.

I would also argue that using the words of others, especially a variety of others, is better in the long run because it opens you and your patrons up to more varied perspectives, reading tastes, and opinions than you could provide to your patrons on your own.

One of my favorite places to find interesting reads for myself is the monthly report put out but the Book Riot staff on their favorite reads of the month. What I love about this list is that it doesn’t matter when the book came out, all that matters is that it was read by that person that month. Here is a link to the just posted April 2018 list.

But all of the Book Riot lists are a great tool to use to talk books with patrons. Click here to pull them all up in reverse chronological order. The topics are varied and there are dozens of staff providing the content. Also the lists are written in a conversational tone which makes it easy to use them as we talk about books with patrons.

Now going back to my mantra.... I 100% do not advocate for you lying and saying you read this book or you wrote these words. What I am advocating for is for you to tell patrons that you know of some great trusted resources by library and book professionals that you can use to share a book with them. You know, the basic principle of librarianship....knowing how to use resources to find the answers to their questions.

All the patrons care about is you telling them something about the books they haven’t read or don’t know anything about. It’s about them discovering a book. It is NOT about you showing off how much you have read.

Or as I like to state even more simply, It’s not about you, it’s about the books.

Seriously, it’s never about you. It doesn’t matter how many books you read this year, or last year, or next year. What matters is how many books you have shared with patrons. That’s the number you should keep track of. Start using resources so you can up those sharing numbers.