Hunger Games Day: Resources for Readers and Movie Goers

As if you didn't already know, but the much anticipated Hunger Games movie opens today; actually last night at midnight in some places.

To better help you to serve your excited patrons, I have gathered my past Hunger Games posts here for you today.

But first, here is some news I have been saving for this exact day.  As I mentioned here, I signed the BPL up to be a book giver on World Book Night.  The process involved proving you would give the books out (easy for us, since we are a library and already do that every single day) and submitting a wish list of three titles from their list that you would be willing to hand out.

Well, on a hope and a prayer, knowing the Hunger Games movie would be out only a month before World Book Night, I made The Hunger Games my first choice.  Here is an excerpt from the acceptance email I received on 2/28:

First of all, we're delighted to confirm that the book you'll be giving away on April 23 is Hunger Games. We hope you're happy with it even if it isn't your first choice and that you are still excited to participate in World Book Night.

Oh yes, I was happy.

So it is official, the BPL will be out in the community giving out The Hunger Games on the evening of 4/23.  We had some patrons also sign up to be givers of different titles.  Closer to the actual date of World Book Night, I will have a schedule of where you can find us and which titles we will be handing out.

But, while you wait for World Book Night to come around, you have to deal with the hoards of patrons who want to read the book or already have read all three and want readalikes.  Thankfully, my students have done the leg work on this already.

Please go to Gennie's Hunger Games readalikes list here or Christi's fabulous Hunger Games reading map here.  Between these two resources you will be able to satisfy your Katniss crazy patrons.

One final note, it is days like today when I am so happy to be a RA librarian.  It feels like the entire world is going crazy over a book.  It is a dream come true.

The Review I Decided Not To Write

As I get closer to being caught up with reviews, I thought today I would tackle the book I read this year that I decided not to review.  Let me explain...

Back in June, I posted here about how I was going to finally read The Hunger Games.  I did.  And, as planned, I read it with my 10 year old.  I had some short questions we talked about after every chapter or 2.  I had originally hoped we would read A Wrinkle in Time together for its 50th Anniversary.  I even told her, knowing her reading tastes, I thought she would enjoy A Wrinkle in Time more, but she insisted, Hunger Games was the book for her.

As I thought, she loved the build up in the Hunger Games; she loved the world building and details right up to the start of the games themselves.  Once the games began, she lost interest.  I literally had to force her to finish it.  We checked out a Nook from the public library, which came loaded with The Hunger Games and the novelty of reading it that way, made her finish it.  She has no desire to read the rest.

[On a side note, later this summer she read A Wrinkle in Time on her own and absolutely loved it.]

We talked a bit about what she didn't like about it, and mostly it was the romance angle.  Yes the violence turned her off a little.  The struggling to survive back in the District part she got, but the forced survival in the games, did not hold her interest.  However, she really didn't get the whole falling in love thing.  So when Katniss pretends to love Peeta so they can win together, my daughter didn't understand why Katniss switched her opinion on him so fast.

This was an age issue, as I thought it would be.  She has read plenty of YA books and loved them, most notably the Leviathan series by Scott Westerfeld. But I knew there was a love plot line in The Hunger Games, and, quite honestly, it is a lot easier to feel the tension in a real conflict like WWI in Leviathan over a constructed reality TV show.  Even a 10 year old can see through that.

Ahh, that last comment hints a bit as to why I decided not to write a review of The Hunger Games.  The truth of the matter is, I really did not like this book.  Some of that dislike comes from the fact that I have read far too many dystopian novels, and this one does not measure up.  But more importantly, I am a reader for character, and one of my problems here is that while some characters are given quite a bit of development, others are not.  Specifically, most of the other contestants, especially the "bad guys" are very stereotypical and surface. Also as a parent, I did not believe that the residents of this world would have gotten to a point where they allowed their children to be killed off so easily.

Enough of my opinion though because my opinion is only part of why I write these reviews.  I write these reviews to explain why someone would like a specific book and to help you to match the best type of reader with that book.  In this case I feel like others have already done a better job at this than I could possibly do.  Specifically, Christi's Reading Map that she did for my class really gets to the heart of the series' appeal.

Anything I could say would not help in the RA conversation surrounding this series.  I may have a lot to say in general here on the blog, but I also know when to shut up and listen.  That's what I did here.  In fact, I have used Christi's Reading Map and other resources to help many readers who love The Hunger Games to find more great reads.

So boys and girls, that's my tale of the review I decided not to write.

Now I am off to do our last Trivia Night of the year.

Stop the Presses...I Finally Start Reading The Hunger Games and BIG News about BPL RA

First, let me set the stage here.  In my job as a RA librarian for mostly adult patrons, I do not have to read everything, I just need to know about the possible appeal factors of everything.  It is a big distinction.  One that makes my job possible.  Having to have read everything in order to do Readers' Advisory would lead to certain failure.

When this comes to extremely popular books, I often do not want to take a copy of that book away from a patron in order to read it myself.  All I need to do is know who it would appeal to and why.  Often with runaway hits this is quite easy.  I can read customer comments on Amazon or GoodReads to get that "loved it" and "hated it" information from actual readers.  These books also have many articles and reviews available, as well as materials in the professional library journals meant to help in this exact situation.

For The Hunger Games this was easy.  I am very well versed in dystopian novels; they have always been one of my favorite subgenres of books, and I read plenty about the series.

Usually, when the holds die down, I will give the book a try for myself if I have time and/or think I would like it.  However, in this case, since my focus is on adult readers, I did not go out of my way to read this YA novel for myself.

But two circumstances have come up, like planets colliding, that has made right now the perfect time for me to begin reading The Hunger Games.

The first is quite innocuous.  My 10 yearr old, advanced reading daughter has been begging me to read The Hunger Games as all of her friends in the advanced reading class had been all year.  I agreed if we both read it and she answered questions after each chapter, verbally and wrote out answers to essays questions when she was done.  She agreed.  She is very excited.

But until yesterday. I had not yet given in to her desire to read it.  I was still on the fence.  And then...here comes the BIG NEWS part of today's post...our fearless leader, Kathy announced yesterday that after over a year of behind the scenes wrangling the BPL RA Department was given the official word that we will now be in charge of the Library's Teen collection!

These new responsibilities begin behind the scenes on October 1 with an unveiling in January.  We want time to work with our teen patrons so they can have a say in remaking their space and crafting their collection.  But it will be a mostly leisure reading collection and patrons from teen readers to adults will now all have their leisure reading needs served at one desk.

So, step one...Hunger Games here I come.  I will report on my experience of reading it with my daughter in a few weeks.  We will be taking it slow so that she can fully understand it.

Hunger Games Reading Map

I just started going through student midterms, but this could not wait to be posted in the update to the Reading Maps Archive.

Christi made this wonderful, interactive, and just plain fun reading map for The Hunger Games Trilogy.  This is a must see for anyone who works in a public library-- of course any fans out there will love it too.

But back to the library workers, since the point of this blog to showcase how your local Readers Advisor can help you.  The Hunger Games is the hottest thing right now, and with the movie coming in March, you cannot have enough options for your patrons.  Christi has provided a way for your readers to look deeper into many of the issues brought up in the trilogy, explore further reading, and connect with other fans.

I also want to remind you of Gennie's Hunger Games Readalikes for Adults list which I posted last Spring and continues to get a lot of hits.  Christi's reading map includes readalikes for adults and young adults too.

Check out both links, you will not be disappointed.

Hunger Games Read Alikes for Adults

For her midterm, one of my students, Gennie, prepared a list of readalikes for all the adult fans of The Hunger Games series.  Her idea was that so many adults were reading the series, why not provide them with a list of other YA titles which they might also enjoy.

The cross-over for YA readers into Adult has been popular for years; in fact, YALSA's Alex Award is based off of this idea.  But, in the past few years, adult readers have been clamoring for more YA reading options.  This list is a great place to start.  Also, this Fall ARRT is focusing our annual bibliography on this topic.  Each Steering Committee member is picking one adult title that would work with YAs and one YA title that will work with adults.  All titles have to be no more than 3 years old.  I am annotating The Radleys by Matthew Haig (adult) and Rot and Ruin by Jonathan Maberry (YA).  Both are late 2010 releases.  The full list of titles will be revealed at the May ARRT meeting with the bibliography going out to members at the Fall program.

And now on to Gennie's list.  Please note, Gennie prepared a very slick pamphlet for use at her home library, but for ease of use here on the blog, I just took the text for reproduction.  Feel free to use it, to help patrons but credit this blog and Gennie.  Thanks.

Anderson, M.T. Feed. 

Anything you want to know about, hear or even buy is available to you via the 

computer implant in your head. Titus never questioned the system until he started to care for Violet. Can he help her when her chip starts to malfunction? 

*This title works extremely well as an audiobook, immersing the listener in the non-stop commercial experience the characters deal with.

Cashore, Kristin. Graceling. 

Cashore, Kristin. Fire. 

Graceling: Katsa has the power to kill. She’s not the only one born with a rare skill, called a Grace, but she struggles more with the consequences. Teaming up with another young fighter, Katsa seeks redemption and to save her land from a mysterious adversary. 

Fire: Graceling's companion book takes place in a war-torn land inhabited by beautiful animal-shaped creatures called monsters whose minds have the power to control those of humans. Seventeen-year- old Fire is the last remaining human- shaped monster. She appreciates right and wrong like the people she resembles, leaving her hated and mistrusted 

Clare, Cassandra. City of Bones. 

Clare, Cassandra. City of Ashes. 

Clare, Cassandra. City of Glass. 

Clare, Cassandra. City of Fallen Angels. 

The world is full of demons from another dimension and the Shadow-hunters who search for them, but normal people can not see either group. Fifteen-year-old Clary Fray thought she was normal, too, until she was almost killed by a monster and her mother disappeared. Now she has no choice but to enter the bizarre world she’s only just glimpsed. 

Dashner, James. The Maze Runner. 

Thomas's new home is surrounded by a maze. Find yourself in it when the walls close at night and you won't come back. Planning an escape is on his mind, but so is finding out who stole his memory. 

Knox, Elizabeth. Dreamhunter. 

Knox, Elizabeth. Dreamquake. 

Your dreams are in your hands, for a price. Only Dreamhunters can enter "The Place" to collect them, which is exactly what fifteen-year-old Laura is training to do. Her father was the first to discover that mysterious realm and when he disappears, she may be the only one who can finish his mission. 

Ness, Patrick. Knife of Never Letting Go. 

Ness, Patrick. The Ask and The Answer. 

Ness, Patrick. Monsters of Men. 

In Todd's world, all the women are dead. Now you can hear, constantly and exhaustingly, all the thoughts of the remaining men and animals. It's called the Noise and when Todd and his dog, Manchee, find a silence, he fights to keep this secret while fleeing from the town leaders and possibly everyone else, as well. 

Pearson, Mary. The Adoration of Jenna Fox. 

Jenna Fox spent a year in a coma, only to wake up in a body that is not her own. Her life doesn't seem right either and the large gaps in her memory aren't helping. She's about to discover she's at the center of a terrible secret with no easy way out. 

Ryan, Carrie. The Forest of Hands & Teeth. 

A chain link fence is the only thing separating Mary’s village from the 

forest beyond. She is a teenager seeking knowledge and love while clinging to the belief of a world past those woods, but travel beyond the barrier is impossible. The woods hold the Unconsecrated, aggressive flesh-eating zombies, and now her mother is with them. 

Shusterman, Neal. Unwind. 

In the future, lives can be saved or improved every day with transplanted body parts. However, the rooms of organs and limbs waiting at the ready did not come from willing donors, but teenagers whose guardians have chosen to have them “unwound.” Do three teens marked for this fate have any chance to escape and survive? 

Werlin, Nancy. Impossible. 

Lucy Scarborough comes from a line of cursed women. For generations, evil has pursued them, winning time and again, but if Lucy can perform three impossible tasks, she can save herself… and her unborn daughter. 

Westerfeld, Scott. Uglies. 

Westerfeld, Scott. Pretties. 

Westerfeld, Scott. Specials. 

Westerfeld, Scott. Extras. 

You will be supermodel beautiful and party to your heart’s content as soon as you turn 16. You and your friends will enjoy the perfect life. Tally has no reason to question her place in society. Then she meets Shay, who not only refuses the surgery that will make life better, but tries to convince Tally there are others out there fighting the system. Finding the truth means questioning all Tally’s ever known. 

Monday Discussion: Assigned Reading

I have back to school on the brain.  My kids start back a week from tomorrow, and yesterday I attended a back to school event for my alma matter.  Also I know that for much of the day at the desk today I will be frantically trying to find an available copy of the assigned summer reading books for local high school kids. (At the time of posting the number is already up to 10) And it doesn't help that all of the incoming Freshman at Morton West are being told to read The Hunger Games, which isn't on the shelf anywhere without having it be assigned (and we added 20 local use copies).

Each time I help a kid locate a copy of The Hunger Games (yes, I know I work at the adult desk, but YA is next door and often unmanned), I think, what a great read they are getting for their assigned summer reading. This got me thinking even further, asking myself: Did I ever get assigned something that great to read in school?

Usually if something is assigned in school, as readers we automatically dislike it before we begin, or we read it differently than if we chose to read it on our own.  But once in a while, we get a gem that stays with us forever; a book that if it had not been assigned, we might never have gotten around to reading it.  Below I have listed some of those gems that came to me during my education and the year I was initially assigned the book.

8th grade: Lord of the Flies by William Golding.  I have read this book 2 more times since and still love it.

High School: Reading Beowulf was an awesome experience, one I still remember.  I was introduced to the book in 9th grade and the teacher began by having us listen to a record of it being read in Old English.  She then told us a summary of what happens in the book before we ever read it.  I was enthralled by the plot of the story and entranced by its antiquity and the foreignness of the "English."  Looking back now, it may be the beginning of my interest in doing RA work.  The idea that such an old story could still hold a modern reader's interest was an eye opening experience to me.  As an adult, I purchased the great Seamus Heaney translation, and have reread it.  I cannot wait to share it with my children when they are older.

Interestingly in 11th grade I may have also taken another step toward my future career without knowing it.  For my English term paper, I was supposed to chose a book and write a 8 pages paper on it.  I chose The Turn of the Screw by Henry James because I was intrigued by the creepy story and the multiple interpretations the book has had overtime.  This novella is considered a precursor to modern horror and psychological suspense.  So this one was not assigned specifically, yet without reading it for a school paper, I may not have read it.  And who knows, maybe I never go down the horror maven route.

College: In college courses I was introduced to 2 of my all time favorite pieces of literature.  The first is the Russian novel The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, which is a must read for any fan of unreliable narrators, book within a book structures, or magical realism.  The second is the story Bartleby, the Scrivener by Herman Melville. (link is to the free full text)  If you want to know why this is one of greatest short stories ever written, I tell you to click through and read it.  I could tell you why, but "I would prefer not to." (read the story and you'll get the joke).

So for today's Monday Discussion, let's all go back to school.  Share your favorite assigned readings from your school days. Why are they so memorable?

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

A Look Back at 2015 in NoveList-- An Why It Will Help You Serve Patrons Better Whether or Not You Subscribe

NoveList sent out their year end report to anyone who subscribes to their NoveList News Newsletter. I was very excited to see this snap shot of what people searched in the database over the course of a year for a few reasons, which I will get to in a second, but first, I had a nice surprise.

As you will see if you click here or read the entire post below, my "It's All About That Frame" article was #3 on the list of the TOP 10 Newsletter Articles or Blog Posts.  I really enjoyed writing that one and sharing this important appeal issue with everyone, so thank you all for reading it. [I also liked giving it the super cheesy title; well I might have liked that part a little too much. Thank goodness my wonderful editor Krista liked it too.]

Now enough about me. Here is why every single library worker who helps leisure reader of any age need to read this look back at 2015-- even more than you need to read any best list [although earlier this month I did have this post on how to properly use the onslaught of best lists to help you to help patrons and look smart]. One of the biggest problems libraries bring to me is that they are having trouble getting their leisure reading patrons to start talking to them about what they want or like.  A lot of my training is about how to begin engaging the public in a conversation about reading.

This is hard because many patrons don't realize that we are there to help them find a good read-- an issue I bring up on this blog frequently. As a result, it can be a slow go for many libraries. The staff are actively trying to build their skills but they are not sure exactly where to begin using these enhanced skills on patrons. They need to know what their patrons like and are looking for in order to help them to identify places to insert themselves into the conversation. But if the patrons won't talk to them about their leisure reading preferences, how can they start.  Arrrggh. It can be a vicious circle of failure.

Never fear though, this article will stop the negative cycle.

Well, here is a snap shot of the national picture of what people are searching right here!  What NoveList has compiled is the titles, appeal terms, list, and more that were the most searched on their database in 2015.  It doesn't matter if librarians or patrons were the ones doing the searching because these items were searched for a reason.  Somewhere a patron spurred the search.

So look at this lists below as the issues, appeal terms, titles, etc... that were the most important to readers in 2015.  Now even if you tried and tried and still could not get RA conversations going with your patrons at your libraries, you still have data and patron driven info to help you plan for 2016. In fact, now you have more ammo on what to begin the conversation with. Try out one of the most popular titles or appeals as you engage a reader in a conversation about books. You will surprise him or her with how well you "know them."

Again, you do not need a subscription to NoveList to see what the American reader is most interested in. Now it is your job [with my help] to see where you can enter the equation and be a RA superstar.

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All Wrapped Up: A Look Back at 2015

Post by Cassi Hall
Posted November 19, 2015 in NextReads, NoveList Plus

As we approach the end of this year and start heading into the next, it’s good to pause and reflect on all the great things about the year we’re leaving behind. So without further ado, let’s take a look at some of the most popular lists, articles, appeal terms, and more in NoveList and LibraryAware from 2015. 

Top 10 Most Searched Titles in NoveList

YA books aren’t just for teens -- readers of all ages love these titles! These were the 10 most often accessed titles in NoveList:

1. The Hunger Games
2. The Maze Runner
3. The Fault in Our Stars
4. Teeny Little Grief Machines
5. The Last Leaves Falling
6. Diary of a Wimpy Kid
7. Wonder
8. Go Set a Watchman
9. Divergent
10. Finding Ruby Starling

Top 10 Recommended Reads Lists for Adults

You don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to see that NoveList users love their mysteries! These lists received the most clicks:

1. Best Of Fiction A-Z 2014
2. Best Historical Fiction of 2014
3. Best Mysteries of 2014
4. Getting Cozy
5. Classic Mysteries
6. Best Thrillers & Suspense of 2014
7. Police Procedurals
8. Best Fantasy of 2014
9. Classic Historical Fiction
10. By the Book

Top 5 Recommended Reads Lists for Teens

Dystopian fiction is still on top for teen readers. Here are the lists with the most clicks:

1. Best Of Teen Fiction 2014
2. 2015 Mid-Year Teen Faves
3. Contemporary Teen Romance
4. Dystopias
5. If You Like…The Hunger Games

Top 5 Recommended Reads Lists for Older Kids

Older kids were looking for laughs in 2015. These are the most frequently used lists:

1. Best Of Older Kids Fiction 2014
2. 2015 Mid-Year Older Kids Faves
3. If You Like…Diary of a Wimpy Kid
4. If You Like…Harry Potter
5. Laugh Out Loud

Top 10 Character Appeal Terms

From flawed to sympathetic, NoveList users loved searching for a wide range of characters to read about! Here are the character appeals with the most titles attached to them. Want to know more about appeals?

1. Flawed
2. Complex
3. Likeable
4. Well-developed
5. Authentic
6. Quirky
7. Strong female
8. Sympathetic
9. Introspective
10. Spirited

Top 10 Newsletter Articles & Blog Posts

2015 was the year of Nonfiction and Storytime for our newsletter subscribers. These were the most clicked on articles. Sign up now if you don’t already receive our newsletter.

1. Nonfiction Read-alikes for Fiction Bestsellers
2. Help Patrons Find the Book They Never Knew They Were Looking For
3. It’s All About That Frame
4. Venturing into New Territories: High Interest Adult Nonfiction for YA Readers
5. Reading Science Fiction for Pleasure
6. How to Choose Great Storytime Books
7. Storytime Toolbox
8. Funny Women: Getting a Laugh in a Man’s World
9. Give Them Goosebumps (Or Something Like It)
10. Romance for Non-Romance Readers

Top 5 Favorite LibraryAware Designs

We loved these designs LibraryAware users made this year!

1. Book Face
2. Read a Graphic Novel
3. Family Storytime
4. Anti-Dystopian YA
5. Libraries & Librarians in Fiction

Top 5 NextReads Newsletters

These are the NextReads newsletters with the most overall subscribers.

1. Fiction A-Z                          
2. Mystery                                              
3. Thrillers and Suspense  
4. NY Times Fiction                              
5. Historical Fiction

What were some of your favorite things from NoveList this year? We’d love to hear about them in the comments.

Monday Discussion: Looking Toward 2011

Last week's Monday Discussion asked what the best book your read this year was.  Click here for the full comments, but here is a quick list of the responses:

• The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
• On the Way to the Wedding by Juila Quinn
• The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart
• Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristof 
• Hours of Idleness by Lord Byron
• My Life in France by Julia Child
• A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
• The Lonely Polygamist by Brady Udall
• The Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins
• Little Bee by Chris Cleave
• The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
• Winter's Bone by Daniel Woodrell

Thanks to all the participants.  Now on to this week's discussion.  Let's stop looking back at 2010 and look ahead to 2011.  Publishers are already starting to advertise 2011 releases. I already have patrons coming in clamoring for titles that don't come out until the end of March.

So for today's Monday discussion, what titles are you most looking forward to?  Click here, here, here, here, here, here, and here to take a peak at some of the biggest titles due out this Winter and Spring.  These links go through April 2011 and include fiction and nonfiction.  I will compile your responses and post them next week.

For me, some of my favorite lighter mystery writers like Lisa Lutz and Alan Bradley have new books coming out in the next few months.  Jasper Fforde will also return with a new Thursday Next book in March, while Orson Scott Card is releases a new contemporary fantasy that I am excited about.  And I can't forget my own book which will be out sometime in late spring/early summer 2011 (click here for the most up to date information as it becomes available).  Use the links in the previous paragraph to check out what is coming and let the rest of us know what you are excited about.

Finally, for those who are interested, I also posted my list of the best horror books of 2010 on RA for All: Horror.  I will have my best list of everything I read in 2010 posted here at RA for All later this week.  I have the list whittled down to 12 and have to make 2 more painful cuts from the final list.  After today however, RA for All will go off of its regular Monday through Friday schedule until the New Year.  I will continue to post over the holidays just not on a reliably daily basis.

To follow any Monday Discussion, past or present click here.

Reminder: ARRT Speculative Fiction Genre Study Penultimate Meeting is Tomorrow

Even if you cannot join us, here is the assignment for our meeting tomorrow. You can always feel free to use our notes and assignments to run your own genre study. All of the information you need is available here. The notes for all previous meetings in this specific study are up to date and available here.

And don’t forget this video presentation of a panel I moderated on Genre Studies where Karen Toonen outlined the details of the ARRT Genre Study, how it has evolved over time, and what we try to accomplish with it.

Audiobooks, Youth/YA, Graphic Novels
October 5, 2017, 2-4 PM
Lisle Public Library

Check out the featured resources: Audible

Watch at least one of each section below (preferably something new to you).

Audiobooks (bonus points if it’s something you’ve read in print)

• Harry Potter
• World War Z
• Ready Player One
• Station Eleven
• Bird Box
• Sleeping Giants
• Nimona

Youth/YA

• The Hobbit
• The Hunger Games
• The Graveyard Book
• The Giver
• Rot and Ruin
• Shadowshaper
• A Wrinkle in Time
• A Wizard of Earthsea
• An Ember in the Ashes

Graphic novels

• Saga
• Monstress
• Locke & Key
• Kindred
• Bitch Planet
• Battling Boy
• Fables

Trending: Infographics

In keeping with yesterday's theme of Graphic Novels, today's post comes courtesy of Susan Brown's blog 658.8--Practical Marketing for Public Libraries, and is part of my irregular "Trending" series where I take a look at trends and try to give you some practical advice on how to incorporate them into to your work with readers.

Yesterday, Brown had this post, RA Goes Graphic, where she highlighted an infographic readalike chart to help readers of The Hunger Games find their next book.

Infographics are becoming very popular as easy ways to get a larger point across.  Click through to see more examples and a few articles explaining how you can create your own.

Thanks Susan.  I am currently working on setting up my first Pinterest boards (summer goal), but I am an even bigger fan of infographics.  I think making my own will be one of my goals for this coming Fall.

World Book Night

I will not have a Monday Discussion today because I wanted to promote World Book Night.

Here is the official World Book Night press release for givers as edited for the BPL specifically:

Who is helping to give out half a million free books all across America on one day? 

The Berwyn Public Library Is!

WHO: From Kodiak, Alaska, to Key West, Florida, in 6,000 towns and cities across America, 25,000 volunteers will give away half a million free books on one day: April 23, 2012.

WHAT: World Book Night U.S. is an ambitious campaign to personally give out thousands of free, specially printed books across America. Volunteer book lovers like myself will help promote reading by going into our communities and handing out free copies of a book we love to new or light readers, reaching them especially in underserved places – and even some fun spots. Volunteers will be picking up the books at a local bookstore or library in order to go out and share them in locations as diverse as VA hospitals, nursing homes, ballparks, mass transit, diners, and more.

We are very proud to be a part of the first World Book Night in the U.S., following the impressive launch of this campaign in the UK and Ireland last year.

On April 23, 2012 with 20 copies of The Hunger Games, 10 copies of The Kite Runner and 10 copies of Little Bee  we have a group who will be handing books out at the Metra Station from 5:30 until we run out.

For more information about World Book Night, please go to www.worldbooknight.org

How did we get 3 books to hand out?  Well, we asked to be a giver as the library and then a patron and her mother also signed up to be givers.  They traded half of their books to each other, giving us 3 titles to handout. 

If you live in Berwyn, look for our givers on the train platform this evening.  If you live anywhere in the US, please be on the look out for strangers giving away books.  If someone puts a book in your hand tonight, please take it.  If you don't want it, pass it on.

If you want to share information about your World Book Night Activities, please leave a comment on this post.

And to all the book lovers out there, enjoy this day to celebrate the power of a good read.  I hope it is successful and that we can do it again next year.  A special thanks to all of the sponsors for providing free copies of 500,000 books.

Monday Discussion: Books You’ve Faked Reading

Okay, time to get honest. In our line of work there are plenty of times when a book becomes HUGE and we are helping patrons to find readalikes while they wait in the holds queue, but we have not had a chance to read them ourselves. Titles that come to mind which serve as an example here are:

• DaVinci Code
• Fifty Shades of Grey
• any James Patterson title
• Game of Thrones
• The Walking Dead

Now, many times these books are too popular for us to get our hands on.  Other times we have no desire to read them despite their popularity.  But the good news on both these fronts is that these huge event books are written about and talked about so much that we can normally help patrons without ever reading the book.

Let me be clear however, I am not outright advocating for you to lie to a patron if he or she asks you if you have read the book in question.  Instead you can say, "The holds list is very long and I want patrons to read it first; besides, I have read a lot about it and have helped many happy patrons using what I know about the book and its appeal."  But, if they don't ask you, you can easily pretend that you have read the book.

So maybe the title of this post is misleading. I am not talking about "faking" that I have read a book, just not admitting that I have not read it and not correcting the perception that I have. Rather, I tend to encourage that perception because it makes the patron more comfortable.

My book is The Hunger Games. Back in 2012 I wrote a longer post about having never read it, but how I still helped many patrons who wanted readalikes. I even had a few people email me to express surprise.  I have written so much about the book, they had assumed that I had read it. But, as they noted, I never said anywhere that I had read it.  Click through to read that full  post.

Now it's your turn.  For today's Monday Discussion, what book(s) have you helped a lot of patrons with that you have never read for yourself.  We all have them.  Time to come clean.

For past Monday Discussions, click here.

YA Crossover Program Tomorrow

Tomorrow is the ARRT program on Teen-Adult crossover books that I wrote about in more detail here.

I am very excited about this program because currently finding good adult books for teens and good teen books for adults is one of my most popular questions at the RA desk.  With the popularity of books like The Hunger Games (teen) and The Book Thief (teen) with an all ages audience, and titles like The Life of Pi (adult) and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (adult) becoming young adult standards, this is a program we all need.

Not convinced? Read this personal essay from Book Riot on why this adult reader loves YA literature.

It is not too late to come. If you think you are interested, email me and I will see what I can do.  I will be there with John, the BPL Display Guru.  And those of you coming, be ready to mingle.  I am going to open the program with an ice breaker to get everyone to network a bit before we get going.