Await Your Reply Discussion Questions

This afternoon my group discussed Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon. I will post the notes of our discussion in the next few days, but in the meantime, I thought I would post the discussion questions I created for this title.

I have to say, I was quite surprised that there were not ones available from the publisher. That being said, I really enjoyed creating these questions. Feel free to use them for your group. If you want to know more about Await Your Reply, click here and see what I had to say about it when I read it for the first time back in January.

Here are my questions:

Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon

Discussion Questions

1. Await Your Reply is written in a very deliberate style with 3 separate storylines, told in 3 separate sections. Did this style enhance the story for you? Did it take anything away?

2. Await Your Reply is an example of psychological suspense. The story tries to unsettle you, the reader. How does Chaon achieve this atmosphere of uneasiness? As a reading experience, did you enjoy it? What other books or films does this novel remind you of.

3. One of the main themes of this novel is the question of identity. What makes up a person’s identity? Is identity as fluid as Hayden believes? After reading the book and seeing how Hayden’s story ends, what do you think Chaon’s opinion on identity is?

4. Miles is extremely loyal to Hayden, Lucy is loyal to “George,” and Ryan is loyal to Jay despite warning signs that they should be more wary. How do issues of loyalty and betrayal play out in this book? What is Chaon saying about loyalty? Do you agree?

5. Await Your Reply is disturbing and unsettling, yet, the sympathetic characters do not meet a bad end themselves and the main antagonist does “get what he deserves.” That being said, overall did you find this book uplifting, depressing, or neither?

6. “Hayden used to be obsessed with orphans,” Miles remembers in Cahpter 16. This novel is filled with characters who have lost parents. Why is the loss of a parent, being an orphan, of such interest to Hayden? How does it fit with the overall themes of the book?

7. What were the strengths and weaknesses of Await Your Reply as you see them?

8. Did you feel the characters were well-developed? What about Hayden? Since he constantly changes his identity and uses parts of the identity of others, did you feel like you knew and understood him by the book’s conclusion or are you still guessing? Who were your favorite characters?

9. Did you enjoy the “ride” Chaon takes you in this psychological thriller? Were you happy with the conclusion? What was your favorite part?

10. This book takes place in a lot of exotic and just plain odd locations. What did you make of the various settings? Did you feel they were central to the plot? Did they help enhance the story and its main themes for you, or were they a distraction?

11. What do you think of the time line of this novel? Have you worked out which story happened when? Does it matter if it is all set straight in your mind at the end or is it okay to still be a bit uncertain? What are the author’s intentions at the end?

12. When did you “get it?” what was the most revealing scene for you in terms of figuring out Chaon’s big twist in his storytelling?

13. Was this story believable? Chaon goes out of his way to put enough detail in the story to explain how Hayden steals people’s identity to make it believable, yet while in Canada, Miles questions how Hayden could do all of bad things people think he has done? The brother he knows is no criminal mastermind.
14. What do you think will happen to Lucy? Miles? Ryan? 

Monday Discussion: What's Your Favorite Feeling?

In past Monday Discussions I have asked about people's favorite frames in their reading. Today I have a similar question. What mood, tone, or feeling do you most look for in your leisure reading choices? In other words, how do you want the book you are reading to make you feel?

I realize this question has different answers based on what is going in your life at the moment. For example, I have a patron who normally loves literary fiction and mysteries, but now, she is going through a rough time as her husband was recently diagnosed with terminal cancer.  Both she and those of us at the RA desk who have been helping her to find her next good read for the last 10 years all need to switch gears. Now we are trying to find her "nice," "happy," "easy on the mind and spirit" reads. For the next year or so, this will be her main appeal determination.

But all things being equal, what is your "go to" feeling? Right now? In general? How has it changed over the years?

For me, this is easy. I most enjoy books that make me feel unsettled.When I look back at my favorite books, no matter the genre, when the overall mood and tone of the book is a bit off, I enjoy it more.  For example, three of my favorite classics are Moby Dick by Herman Melville, Twice-Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne and Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky. The only feature these books share is the unsettling feeling they elicit from the reader.

This mood is not limited to a genre; however, the most common genres it appears in are literary fiction, psychological suspense, and literary fiction. So, it should come as no surprise that these are my favorite genres. I like this mood all of the time, but even more so when I am stressed because the dark and unsettling things in the book are way worse than what is going on in my life. It gives me perspective.

Suspense and mystery have a such a range of moods and tones that it is really imperative that I have a way to assess the book's mood before diving into it.  This is why I spend so much time training librarians and library students to be able to both determine and articulate a book's tone and mood to potential readers. After pacing, I think it is the biggest issue that readers do not articulate a preference for in the casual RA interaction. The librarian must come out and ask the patron what kind of mood they are looking for at that moment. Their answer makes a huge difference in terms of what I would suggest.

So again, I ask you, what is your go-to mood? Right now? In general? How has it changed over the years?

You can also follow past Monday Discussions here.

Becky’s 10 Rules of Basic RA Service:

This morning I am at the Fond du Lac Public Library's in-service day presenting my program RA for All: Basic Readers' Advisory for All Library Staff.

We will be doing a lot of exercises and discussing how to best help all of the leisure readers who walk into the library.  It is a fun 80 or so minutes all about how to talk about books and reading, and really, if you work in a library, how can you not love that.

I base the entire presentation on "Becky's 10 Rules of Basic RA service."  Over the years I have found that if you stick to these 10 rules, you can provide good, basic readers' advisory service to just about any patron. Obviously, there is a point at which a more fully trained staff member may need to step in. But, since most patrons think everyone who works in a library (from the high school pages to the Department Heads) is a librarian and is qualified to talk about "good books," every staff member needs training in the basics of how to help patrons find their next good read. A nice outcome of this presentation, is that it also encourages staff to begin sharing what they are reading with each other, which goes a long way toward providing their patrons with better service.

You can access the full handout with resources here, but I here are the 10 Rules:

1.) Betty Rosenberg: “Never apologize for your reading tastes.”

2.) Suggest don’t Recommend.

3.) Everyone reads a different version of the same book.

4.) Write down adjectives about what you read; plot you can find.

5.) Read widely (at least speed read widely).

6.) Read about books (RSS feeds).

7.) Share what you read- with staff and patrons.

8.) Never let a patron leave unsatisfied.

9.) Get out from behind the desk.

10.)Get involved in creating displays.

If you are interested in having me come to your library to present this or any other program program, click here. Please note, however, I have a limited appearance schedule this Fall, but am wide open in 2011.

October is National Book Club Month

I know it is only the middle of September, but with my book club scheduled to meet on Monday, this post on Book Group Buzz reminded me that back in 2007, the Women's National Book Association designated October National Book Club Month to promote reading groups and to just encourage reading in general.

One of the best things they produce for this celebration is a list of "Great Group Reads."

Although my group picks our titles in 6 month blocks and we are not due to pick again until November, I always refer to this list when providing my group with a list of possible choices to vote on. I also like to peruse past year's lists to get more ideas.  Here is the link to 2009's list.

The point I am making here is that when you are choosing books for your group, you do not need to have the newest titles in order to have a successful group. Take a look at our current schedule at the BPL and you will see we are reading and discussing books both new and old.

This year's Great Group Reads list (appended below) includes one title our group is scheduled to discuss in November, Little Bee by Chris Cleave; otherwise the list contains 12 other titles we didn't even consider back in May when we voted on our July-December titles. I can guarantee you a few of these titles will be on our ballot for January-June 2011.

Besides this year's list, if you go to the site, you can read the committees annotations on the titles and/or use this link to access their National Book Club Month toolkit to promote National Book Club Month at your library. Now for the list (click through on each title for more details)t:

2010 Selections
Blame by Michelle Huneven
The Blessings of the Animals by Katrina Kittle
Cheap Cabernet: A Friendship by Cathie Beck
Eternal on the Water by Joseph Monninger
The Girl Who Fell from the Sky by Heidi W. Durrow
Little Bee by Chris Cleave
The Lotus Eatersby Tatjana Soli
Molly Fox's Birthday by Deirdre Madden
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender
The Queen of Palmyra by Minrose Gwin
Room by Emma Donoghue
Safe from the Sea by Peter Geye
Up from the Blue by Susan Henderson

Weeding

Weeding is always a tough process for librarians and patrons and over the weekend The Library Chick had this post talking about some of her problems with their current wedding project. Click through to see her full post.

I posted this comment to her:

Weeding is always hard. What I tell new staff and patrons who are concerned about us getting rid of books is that we are a local public library, not a repository of every book ever written. We would love to keep every book, but we have limited shelf space. Our goal is to have the best general interest collection we can. We need to be efficient and effective with the space we have.

Of course, some local libraries do have special areas of interest. For example, my library's town (Berwyn, IL) is famous for its bungalow style homes, so we have a large collection on information about these homes. We keep pretty much everything on the topic.

I think focusing on the efficient and effective collection issue is key. You need a Hoover biography, but just one and hopefully there is consensus on the best one. Also, remind people that ILL is a fabulous thing and they can have that musty old Hoover bio when or if they want it through World Cat; or, they are welcome to take the discarded copy right now.

Good Luck with the weeding project. And, thanks for bringing up the topic. Weeding is a huge part of collection development; it is just not as fun as buying new books.

Without a solid commitment to weeding, all of our collection development work is for naught. It is hard for patrons and librarians to watch books being "thrown away," but we cannot keep everything; we have neither the space nor the money. That is the mission of The Library of Congress and they can barely keep up.

In order to make our collections useful to  public library patrons, the professional librarians need to continually take the pulse of their collections, asses its strengths and weaknesses, make decisions about replacing worn materials, add where there are holes, and delete where necessary.

There is not enough about weeding in library school collection development classes. In fact, I go out of my way to add it to my customer service class in the RA course I teach. The students are always appreciative of my frank comments about the necessity of weeing, and continuously tell me that the 10 minutes I spend talking about it to them, is the most they hear about weeding in library school.

Weeding is a customer service. Having your shelves neat, in order, and as efficient and effective as possible, helps users. They should not have to, for example, wade through 10 out of date biographies to find the 2 that are the best and most respected. They should be able to come into the library knowing that the collection in front of them (or at least the catalog is the book is checked out) represents the most current and best received materials of general interest. That is, considering population size, budget and spacing. But this is why libraries hire professionally trained librarians instead of just general book lovers.

Each time I go out and do a RA training at other libraries, I also mention weeding. No matter the topic I am talking on, weeding has a place in the discussion.

Thanks to The Library Chick for venting her frustrations and bringing up this touchy topic.  And, to end on a fun note, you can always turn all of your withdrawn books into a new RA desk.

Introducing My New Blog-- RA for All: Horror

As I have hinted here before, I have begun a new venture. Introducing RA for All: Horror! Below you can see the text of the first post, which explains it all. I have already transferred most of the horror content from RA for All on to the new horror site.

I will be going over the site in detail for those of you who are attending my presentation in Downers Grove on 9/21 (room still available; click here to register; you can register up to the day of)

From the "About this Blog" page:

After 3 years of writing RA for All I have learned many things. The first is that a successful blog takes time and effort to run.

Which leads me to the second thing I have learned; that if you put in the time and effort and you have something coherent and educational to say, people will read your blog and, more importantly, appreciate it.

Finally, I have learned that what I do to showcase the work we Readers' Advisors do in the trenches on RA for All needs to stay separate from my other big professional goal, which is to help librarians match horror readers with their next good read.

So, to that end, and in conjunction with the impending publication (2011) of a completely revised Horror Readers' Advisory, second edition, I am going to be posting all horror related posts on this blog. I will update RA for All readers when new content will be available here on RA for All: Horror, but I would suggest subscribing to the RSS feed for this blog also.

Unlike RA for All (the original), RA for All: Horror, will not be updated every day. There will be spurts of activity and then silence. But it will be only horror and horror related topics.

Then once the new edition of the book is out, this blog will take on the role of being the official update to that text. Making your purchase of the book a great deal, since this edition will come with free updates here on RA for All: Horror. I will not duplicate the book here, but rather, I will be supplementing it.

I will also set up separate pages to serve as an index to horror book reviews/annotations and any author information. So you can have easy access to my original material.

So here's to beginning another new journey with all of you. Happy Haunting!

Monday Discussion: Gulp or Sip?

Last week, on the science fiction and fantasy publisher Tor's blog, Jo Walton posted this essay talking about being a gulp or sip reader. An excerpt:

I have nothing against reading in great gulps—it’s just that I don’t find it necessary for enjoyment. Reading in little sips works too.

So I was wondering—how odd am I? How many people are like me, reading as they go about their day, and how many like my friend, needing clear chunks of free time to get into a book? Does it matter if it’s a new book or a re-read? Do some books require more sustained attention than others? Are you a sipper or a gulper?

You can use this link to read the entire post. As for me, I think I am more or a sipper. I do like reading in gulps but with 3-4 jobs, and 2 small children, I always carry a book with me. I will read for 1 minute, 5 minutes, whatever time I have while waiting somewhere for something or someone. Also, I have found that it does not matter what book, fiction, nonfiction, re-read; no matter the book, I can sip at it.

I take this sipping even further as I always have an audiobook loaded on my ipod. I listen to books while doing the dishes, while folding laundry, while grocery shopping, and while waiting for school to let out. I carry the ipod everywhere, so I am never without a book. Sometimes I listen for as much as an hour, but more often than not, it is 15 minutes at a time.

Like Walton though, when I get the chance to sit an read for a while, I run with it. On Labor Day I took just that chance. While at the Indiana Dunes State Park beach, with the kids happily playing in the shallow water and digging in the sand, I spent the entire afternoon reading Freedom while next to me my husband was immersed in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Both of us enjoyed that chance for gulping.

However, if pressed to say which I enjoy more, I'd have to say the sipping.  When I sip, I have an easier time reading multiple books at once (I am always listening to one and reading at least one at the same time). Also, I have the comfort of always having a book to get lost in, even if just for a a few minutes. Sipping provides a mini-escape. If I would have to wait until I could gulp, I would forget the people and places I am reading about in between gulps. Also, I am afraid I would tire of reading so much if I only did it for hours at a time.

But hey, that's just me. What about you? For Today's Monday discussion, let me know what kinda of reader you are. As Walton asked, "Are you a sipper or a gulper?"

Remember, you can follow past Monday Discussions here.

China Mieville, Michael Chabon, and Genre Blending**

In The Millions today, Bill Morris has this great essay on China Mieville entitled, "How China Mieville Got Me To Stop Worrying and Love Monsters."

This is a both a love note to Mieville and a discussion on the mixing of genres.  This is an issue that I also feel strongly about. Great reads do not need to be all literary or all genre based. Just because a book has monsters does not make it "lower" than another book.

Morris' essay on Mieville is a great starting point in this discussion. And, if you haven't read Mieville, you should. But if you want to read more, run out to the library and borrow Michael Chabon's Maps and Legends:Reading and Writing on the Borderlands. Specifically, read the first chapter, "Trickster in a Suit of Lights," which contemplates this issue at length. In this chapter, Chabon posits that the best literature is that which is written in between the genres. Works that take a bit from other genres, in his opinion, tend to be the best.

Chabon should know.  He is a master who mixes genres in all of his works and has racked up the awards to prove his worth.

**This is a cross post with RA for All Horror.

Totally Hip Video Book Reviews By a Professional Reviewer

Book trailers have become quite popular recently. However, I have never been totally satisfied with them as a resource for helping readers. Yes, I like how they use a video format to sell a book, but it is still the author or publisher's version of their book.

What we really need are video book reviews by trained reviewers. The format would engage new potential readers who are more apt to respond to the video format and the content would also be critical and professional. As a RA librarian I need third party reviews in order to help patrons, especially with the newest titles that I have yet to read myself. However, most of these video review options are not done by professional reviewers.

Thankfully, Ron Charles, the book critic for The Washington Post also noticed this void and has filled it brilliantly.  His first two Totally Hip Book Reviews were done on his own, but The Washing Post has now signed on to sponsor him. 

In the example I have embedded below, Charles reviews Jonathan Franzen's Freedom. Here's what I love about what you will see. Chalres takes full advantage of his expertise as a reviewer and the video medium.  He uses visual gags, an informal and humorous tone, yet still manages to have an insightful and extremely useful review. I cannot wait for the next one; I heard it was going to be Sarah Gruen's Ape House.

Thanks to Early Word for leading me to Ron Chalres and his Totally Hip Book Reviews. Click here to access all of the reviews.

Best Crime Novels of the 2000's

Thanks to Lit Lists, I found this list of The Best Crime Novels of the last decade originally published in The Times of London back in February.

The list, interestingly, takes 1 book for each year of the decade and then writes a paragraph on why it was the best book for that year. Each pick is also accompanied by an honorable mention list of three more titles.  What you get by perusing this list, is a snapshot of the current state of crime literature. You also get a nice reading list for those cold winter nights that are not too far off in the future.

If that isn't enough to get you to click on over and see the list for yourself, I will leave you with this teaser: 2009's choice is a Nodic Noir, but not the one you think...