Week Five

Trying to catch up after falling a few weeks behind, I offer my lovely week-five post, which I had written but never actually posted! Enjoy :)


Assignment 1:

My biggest take-away from NPR books is that it has some of the most eye-catching and engrossing book reviews I've ever seen. From the way it lays out its ordinary book reviews - a short-and-sweet one-liner to draw you in to a 500-800 word analysis-rich review - to its special features and clever organizational flair, everything about the site seems expertly designed to draw me in and keep me reading.

The year's review of books, which recently came out for 2015, fascinated me, as it offered unique but highly useful categories like "Seriously Good Writing," "Book Club Ideas," and "Rather Long"/"Rather Short." It's use of "Eye-Opening" as a category even helped me put a name to an appeal factor I often look for but had never known how to express! And the way you can mix and match categories to find the perfect book I found very helpful - and rather reminiscent of WhichBook.

Other features on the site equally interesting, and I was disappointed to find that they hadn't been updated in almost two years: "Three Books," which groups titles thematically in clever ways, such as out-of-body experiences, mid-life crises, and the darker side of quilting; "My Guilty Pleasure," where authors share the books they are embarrassed to admit to reading and loving; and "This Week's Must Read," which pairs a recent headline with a book that offers some sort of commentary on it. I only wish these had been kept up to date, so I could see what each is recommending now!

But sometimes I felt, when browsing happily through all of this engrossing material, that so much effort was put into making the features sleek, eye-catching, and engaging, that perhaps it detracts from the site's practicality. For example, a recent special series on transportation-related books would definitely keep my attention, but as a librarian, whose main reason for reading reviews is not to find a book for myself (after all, I am surrounded by books and book-lovers everyday, surely I don't need any extra help from NPR!), but instead to prepare for reader's advisory, would this kind of set-up be most useful? Contrast this with EarlyWord, and I see the great difference between book resources for librarians and the general populace.

EarlyWord I found to be a bit cluttered. Especially after the glossy feel of NPR's book page, which was directed more toward my pleasure and amusement, it felt like this site was all business. And rightly so, as a site dedicated to keeping librarians and library professionals abreast of the book scene for the benefit of their customers. Once I employed a bit of willpower and went digging, I found a lot of really useful info. The site (and the sites it link to) seems like a fairly reliable place for me to find out more about the books I recognize from our branch's shelves. This makes it a good alternative to NPR Books where, although I really enjoyed its reviews, I found very little overlap with the books circulating in my branch. There, even when book was reviewed weeks ago and touted as a great read, I seldom saw it on a shelf display, or heard it mentioned in conversation with a customer. But on EarlyWord, I found lots of short blurbs about the books whose covers I see all the time, but never got around to picking up and perusing. While I may continue looking at NPR's reviews because they are so engaging and well-written, I think I will rely mostly on EarlyWord from now on to fill in the gaps in my Reader's Advisory knowledge.


Assignment 2:

I've learned to identify "what's popular" in my branch by what names I know now that I had never heard of nine months ago when I started working in a library. Having come right from college where I spent all my time reading for class, I don't think I even knew who James Patterson was, let alone such now-familiar names as Janet Evanovich, Harlan Coben, David Baldacci, John Grisham, Clive Cussler...Although I have still not read many of these popular authors, the fact that I recognize their names and can describe vaguely the appeal factors of their books tells me that I've had enough conversations about them to retain at least a little. Coming to the branch as a kind of "clean slate," I think that how my name recognition skills have grown is a pretty fair representation of my customers' preferences. In a way, they've molded me to fit their needs!


Assignment 3:

Since I confess that I still largely judge books by their covers, I chose Everyone Brave is Forgiven to examine from the Amazon "Best of the Month" list. As a student of history, I was drawn to the striking image of bombers over London on the cover - and I was not disappointed.

The book's setting, and to an extent its plot, made me think of such recent hits as All the Light We Cannot See and The Nightingale. War, as a powerful catalyst of human action, has always been a fruitful backdrop for literature, but it seems that popular authors have been taking particular advantage of that lately, and in really wonderful ways. Turning the attention away from the daring escapades of soldiers on the battlefield and toward the smaller intimate struggles has opened the "War story" genre to a wider audience, and I think that readers who have recently been turned onto this category of books will be eager to get a hold of this new novel. Plus, the fact that the story is based on the love letters sent between the author's grandparents is an added bonus that will likely pique readers' interests!