Library Journal is celebrating their 150th Birthday and they want all of us to help them celebrate by sharing your sure-bet reads. Form the landing page of the survey:
Share Your Sure-Bet Reads To Celebrate LJ’s 150th Birthday
Library Journal is celebrating its 150th birthday in 2026. We invite you to celebrate with us by thinking about the books you love and helping us create a list of sure-bet titles to share with the LJ community of librarians and readers.
Feel free to share as many books as you like, across as many categories as you like. Just list them as they come to you. Order does not imply a ranking.
If you can only think of five sure-bet mysteries, list those. Got more than 20 romances? Feel free to include them all. Have no opinion about graphic novels? You can skip that category. Listened to it on audio and loved it? That counts too; please list it.
We define a “sure bet” as a book adored by readers of the genre or subject—a title that they think of as “a keeper” or the all-time great work of its kind, one that they might always have in their bag, in their car, or on their phone for reading emergencies. A sure bet is a book that librarians can reliably suggest to patrons looking for something great. It doesn’t matter how old or new the book is, as long as it’s still in print. Series installments are welcome too, no matter where the book falls in the series.
We hope you will have as much fun in completing this exercise as we will have in reading your responses.
Feel free to share this link with your own reading community, book club, and colleagues. We want to invite everyone to celebrate books and the wonderful roles they play in our lives.
My favorite thing about this survey is that they want genre titles. This is not a snobby best books of the last 150 years list. This is a true list of the books that we know work with a wide range of readers, especially genre readers. It is a list of the books we all love. I am obviously going to submit a bunch of horror, but I have books in every category to share. I know you do too.
We need to get on this. All of us. We suggest books to readers every day. We know what titles are beloved. And as they wrote above, share this with your patrons. LJ wants to make their birthday a celebration of books and the role they play in making our lives better.
This survey is also an easy conversation starter to display option. You can spread the question to your patrons and encourage them to participate. Post the link every where you are online and have QR codes for people in the building to access it as well.
And then sit back and wait while LJ does the work for you. They will post the sure bets lists by genre on their site later this year. You can turn those into lists on your website for your readers to find sure bets on their own or for you and your staff to use as a resource as you work with readers. You will never be stumped for a suggestion again. Every genre and even formats will be covered. And you will have a bounty of titles to make so many displays. I will be posting about the results at length as LJ releases the lists.
If you are feeling adventurous, you can also make a local version of the lists based on the answers you get back from doing the conversation starter to display exercise with your patrons.
But no matter what you decide to do or not do with the results, just participate. You the readers of this blog are THE target audience here, both to share your insight and get the word out to your bookish community. The more people we ask, the more diverse the results we receive.
Again click here to participate. The survey is open until 9/28. You can go in and do it as many times as you want and add as many books as you want. It is literally a bookish dream come true.
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