Today I have a guest post by my colleague and good friend, Lila Denning. She is my go-to person for all things passive RA related and my forever StokerCon roommate. But here is her actual bio:
Lila Denning is the Acquisitions Coordinator for the St. Petersburg Library System in St Petersburg, FL, which includes collection development, collection maintenance, and cataloging. Her library experience includes circulation, reference, youth services, outreach, and programming. She has presented on passive readers advisory at conferences and talks about it regularly on Twitter.
Recently, she was posting on Twitter about how she has embraced the concept of "book best friends," as a new tool in her work with readers. I asked her to expand upon the concept for the blog, and thankfully she did.
Below is Lila's post explaining the concept of "book best friends" and how you can use it to match books with readers at your library.
If you have a concept, display idea, or RA based program you would like to share with others, I am currently considering guest posts for the end of the year. Reach out to me in any of the ways listed here.
And if you try out a "Book Best Friends" display, let Lila and I know as well.
Matching Books with Their Besties
by Lila Denning
Readers advisory is often described as helping readers find books “just like” one they loved. For example, if you have read and enjoyed Scandinavian noir mysteries, I have a list of others that I would recommend because they share a lot of the same sorts of characters, settings, tone, and plot points. These sort of book siblings are often used in lists and book displays because they are quick and easy to create and fill in.
There is a straight line between some books. Working with the public in libraries has shown me that often what people want are what I would call "book best friends." Just like with long time best friends, reading one will bring the other to mind even if you can’t immediately articulate a clean list of reasons why.
When I asked on Twitter what suggestions people had for book best friends, Sadie Hartman (Mother Horror) of Night Worms and Dark Hart Books responded with Mexican Gothic (Silvia Moreno-Garcia) and The Ancestor (Danielle Trussoni). She talked about them having a “similar reader’s vibe” she picked up on while reading them. That vibe or general feeling is what book best friends often share. In Mexican Gothic, the main character heads out to High Place, a house in the Mexican Countryside while The Ancestor takes its main character to a castle in Italy. This shift to a setting with secrets and a sense of foreboding makes them good candidates for book best friends.
Once a patron asked me to help them find a book that was like Water for Elephants. She didn’t want a circus story or book about the Great Depression. She didn’t even care about a love story. What she wanted was another book about a found family or family of choice which was at the center of her reading experience and enjoyment of Water for Elephants.
This interpretation of the story opened a variety of options for best friends. You could suggest a variety of books from Mary Ann Shaffer’s Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society with its book club or even Sarah Gailey’s American Hippo novellas which feature a group of loners and misfits. Give a patron a variety of options that work with what they are seeking and encourage them to take a few home; if they dislike the first one, they can have another option.
Characters themselves can jump out to you as people who would be friends in real life. Oliver from Chuck Wendig’s The Book of Accidents is a sensitive boy who relocates with his parents to a new place where weird things start happening. While I was reading The Hollow Kind by Andy Davidson, I immediately made a connection between that book’s Max and Oliver. I have even suggested [on Twitter] that they needed a buddy novel where they could go on an adventure together.
Returning to Scandinavian mysteries, when I read Shutter by Ramona Emerson, I was reminded of the great female detectives and investigators in Scandinavian mysteries. There wasn’t a clear line from Shutter to those mysteries, but I couldn’t shake the resemblance. The main character in Shutter, Rita Todacheene, is a Navajo forensic photographer and may seem worlds away from Swedish characters like Irene Huss from Helene Tursten’s novels or Kristina Ohlsson’s Frederika Bergman. Shutter also has supernatural and horror elements that are not present in either Tursten or Ohlsson’s books. However, I think these books qualify as best friends because of factors like main characters who share things like troubled pasts that they still wrestle with and messy, complicated family and personal lives. These books are as much about imperfect people trying to find a way to work together despite their personal issues as they areabout the crime at the center of the book. A patron who was focused on the puzzle or who-done-it might find all of these books frustrating but someone who loved complex characters and an analysis of a particular place, whether Sweden or New Mexico, could love all of these books.
When you read a book and one of these best friends comes to mind, make a note of it. It’s a great idea in general to keep some sort of reading log if you are interested in readers advisory so you don’t forget the things that come to mind while you are reading. Also, pay attention when other readers mention that a book or character reminds them of another. As you assemble enough, you can put together a display or online list.
For a passive program, encourage your patrons to post their own using a physical display or a post on social media. Library workers can learn about what appeals to readers by reviewing what books patrons think would be best friends. Some answers might be more obvious, but readers will surprise you.
You can start it off with a simple question such as: What books do you think are best friends? Post it online and have some staff answers, or just use mine above to get the conversation started. Put up a display entitled, Book Best Friends. Fill it with pairs of books. Ask readers to add their own either directly to the display, or have them write them down to post on a board or put in a box. You can gather those suggestions to add to the display, list, or social media conversation.
Then encourage other readers to check out both titles at once. It's a win-win all around. You provide a fun, interactive experience for readers, while staff learn a new way to make book suggestions. Bonus points for encouraging 2 checkouts where previously there might only be one.
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