Goodreads Summer Reading Coverage

Goodreads has released their summer reading coverage and there is excellent info here for your patrons and displays. But please remember, all of these books are releasing between mid-May and August, so many of them will not be available for checkout to many of your patrons for most of the summer. Just by showing up on these lists, a holds queue will form.  

But this is actually not as big a problem as you think. Why? Come on, you know. Say it with me....THE BACKLIST.

Summer Reading is not a new thing. You can use this link to pull up many posts, over many years, which I have tagged Summer Reading. All of those books, but especially those from the last 2-5 years will do the best on Summer Reading lists and displays. If they were popular and good enough to make those lists from the recent past AND they are still on your shelves, they are automatically an excellent option for Summer Reading this year.

You can also use the Publisher's Weekly Summer Reads page which has this year's as the main page, but there are links to every past year right at the top of the page as well. Click here for my post about that resource.

Again, here is the landing page for their Summer Reading Coverage. There are many lists and there is a mixture of editor and reader picks. They make it nearly impossible to find previous year's coverage but I did find the link to Goodreads' 2022 Summer Reading Guide here by searching my "Summer Reading posts."

And not to get off topic, but any title can be a summer read. It does not have to appear on a branded "Summer Reading List" to be considered as such. I am simply using these timely resources to help you get ready.

Embrace Summer Reading at your library. Showcase as wide a range as possible of books, in the building and online, because our statistics show that our check-outs go up in summer. People make time for reading the summer in ways they do not during the rest of the year. Get ready for them by using your backlist of resources. Have options ready for them; the Goodreads model of categories is a great way to organize options for your patrons as well. 

Anticipate their needs. They will thank you for it later.