All About the Genres

So remember how we were supposed to choose a genre based website and explore it? And this week we were supposed to discuss our discoveries? Well I did choose Happily Ever After but from how the website was designed, I became disinterested quickly. Over the past few weeks, I forgot about choosing a genre-based website, my bad.


I have picked a new one and it was TOR.com (Fiction Affliction), which is one of the Sci-Fi genre dedicated websites. I chose this one mostly based on website design to be honest. The website is definitely up to date, and posts are as frequent as a couple of hours apart and everyday. They post new releases of books and reviews of them, and excerpts of new books as well.


What caught my attention, were the posts from today, such as "Five Fantasy Novels with Perfect Opening Lines" which breakdowns five novels that will get you hooked with the first sentence. Also, an article called "What Your Favorite Joker Says About You" which talks about the different depictions of the Joker character throughout pop culture and what that joker says about your personality type.

2 of my favorites (from week #2 or #3)

1. Mitch Albom's The Timekeeper is a fast-paced read. Albom, known for capturing details and giving the reader, goes beyond that in this novel. By using an action-adventure and suspenseful storyline, surround the mysteries of time in our lives, Albom successful allows the reader to be immersed in the story. The tone is light and suspenseful, and gives the reader the understanding of time and how humans never have enough time and how we try to control it.


2. Tosca Lee's The Legend of Sheba: Rise of a Queen takes us to a biblical time when a girl inherits her father's wealth and throne and she grows to be a queen of a rich and wealthy, and prosperous land. Further in the book, there is a conflict where she has to decide become allies with the great King Solomon, and must yield her pride to prove her status and wealth of kingdom, and through communications they begin to love each other. Lee's attention to detail of the location ad time through descriptions of clothing, palaces, etc., transports the reader into the backdrop of the biblical history and character development.

I can only say in the past year of reading, I have only enjoyed these two.

Week #5: Ooops..my bad

From choosing Goodreads as my base knowledge source during week #1 assignment, I sort of didn't challenge myself to go out my comfort zone, since I am accustomed to Goodreads. I did explore EarlyWord and will talk about that later in the post. But what I did do was explore Goodreads further and actually search through the groups and browse by category tags (i.e., historical fiction, Sci Fi, etc.) and see what groups are reading my "To-Read" books, or the books I am currently reading. It is a good way to check out recommendations or suggestions of books similar.


According to our stats we got back in June, the most popular author in our branch is James Patterson.


The book I chose from Amazon's Best Books of the Month was The Hand That Feeds You  by A.J. Rich. I think it will appeal to most people because it is a psychological, suspenseful, murder mystery thriller. These type of novels keep readers on the edge of their seats, wanting to happens next and not putting the book down.

Week #4: Loving Goodreads

So I joined Goodreads when I first started working for BCPL (has been a year now), after a bunch of co-workers highly suggested it, and I'm addicted to it. Like most people I add a lot of books to my "To Read" category and I feel like I will never get around to them because there are so many books, but so little time, and when you see more books that you want to read and you just keep adding them to the "To Read" category. It is a frustrating cycle to say the least, but still enjoyable. Until this week's assignment, I never thought to add my own shelves, instead I've only had the "To-Read," "Read," or "Currently Reading" shelves. I just created a "Self Improvement" shelf, a "Historical Fiction" shelf, and a "Dystopian/Apocalypse" shelf.


The one book I recommended to my colleagues at work, and to you if you are reading this, is The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. I'm still reading it, and my cousin recommended it to me. It is a book that allows you to self reflect on your present thinking of yourself. It is a personal development book with a spiritual, almost calming tone, but whether you are spiritual or not, Tolle speaks to his audience in the present tense to whatever journey you are on in life.

RA Conversations

Conversation #1
The type of book I would suggest to this patron is a book that is light and witty with a tone of self-discovery and reflective inner-thoughts. Also, a book that most likely has or currently on the best sellers list. I would probably suggest Cheryl Strayed's Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail or Frances Mayes's Under the Tuscan Sun. 


Conversation #2
The type of book I would suggest to this patron is a book with a vampire story, without a romance or love story, a book with adventure or mystery elements, possibly a vampire/assassin type of book. I would probably suggest Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles series.


Conversation #3
The type of book I would suggest to this patron is a thriller-type historical fiction novel with suspense and adventure. That being said, I would suggest Elizabeh Kostova's The Historian or Diane Setterfield's The Thirteenth Tale.

Reader's Advisory Reflections

Reflection of RA convo. article
Becoming a librarian in the past month has made me realize that the Reader's Advisory conversation is really important, when interacting with patrons. As Neal Wyatt states in the article, the point is to "connect with the readers" and actively listen to what the patron says about a book they have enjoyed to find other books similar to appeal to their needs. As the weeks go by, I am becoming a better listener to the customers to give better suggestions or alternatives on material.


Reflection on Nancy Pearl
Listening to the podcast of Nancy Pearl, I noticed that she usually spends a max of 3 minutes talking about a book: the plot, the tone the author used, and her personal review and feelings on the book.