Week Three Prompt Response

Part 1:

1.        I am looking for a book by Laurell K. Hamilton. I just read the third book in the Anita Blake series and I can’t figure out which one comes next!

The next book you will want is The Lunatic Cafe. I found this using NoveList and searching for the author Laurell K. Hamilton. Once you get to her page you will click on series, then select the Anita Blake series and it shows all the titles printed in order of publication.

    

       2.  What have I read recently? Well, I just finished this great book by Barbara Kingsolver, Prodigal Summer. I really liked the way it was written, you know, the way she used language. I wouldn’t mind something a bit faster paced though.

The book I would suggest is Yellow Emperor’s Cure. Prodigal Summer had the writing styles of descriptive, lush, and lyrical and Yellow Emperor’s Cure has these same writing styles along with richly detailed but the pace is fast-paced which is what the reader has requested. I found this suggestion using NoveList and first pulling up the title Prodigal Summer to find out what the writing style was. If you scroll down on the title you are looking at you can change your search terms by options that are part of the title you are looking at. I selected all of the writing style options and clicking on search. Once the search came up I used the option on the left side of the screen to narrow down the pacing to fast-paced. This book is the third option on the list but I felt that it matched better with Prodigal Summer then the first two options.

        3   I like reading books set in different countries. I just read one set in China, could you help me find one set in Japan? No, not modern- historical. I like it when the author describes it so much it feels like I was there!

The title I would recommend is The Teahouse Fire by Ellis Avery. It is a historical fiction set in Kyoto, Japan. This book is described as having a descriptive, engaging, lyrical, and richly detailed writing style. This would fit the requirement of the book the patron was looking for. I found this by doing an advanced search and using the search term of Japan and historical and selecting to sort by adult and fiction. Once the list of titles was shown I used the left panel and limited the writing style to descriptive and richly detailed.

                  

       4. I read this great mystery by Elizabeth George called Well-Schooled in Murder and I loved it. Then my dentist said that if I liked mysteries I would probably like John Sandford, but boy was he creepy I couldn’t finish it! Do you have any suggestions?

I would recommend A Possibility of Violence by Dror Mishani. This book is one of the suggested read-alikes given by NoveList for Well-Schooled in Murder. When you look at the appeal terms several of them match. Characters are both complexes, the storyline is character-driven and intricately plotted, the tone is suspenseful, and writing style is compelling and richly detailed. I found this by looking up Well-Schooled in Murder in NoveList and looking at the read-alikes that were provided by NoveList.

      5.My husband has really gotten into zombies lately. He’s already read The Walking Dead and World War Z, is there anything else you can recommend?

I would recommend Rise Again: a Zombie Thriller by Ben Tripp. I found this suggestion by looking up World War Z and picking several different appeal and subject search. I selected for the genre to be apocalyptic fiction and horror, storyline to be plot-driven, and the writing style to e compelling. When the search result came up I pick this title and looked at the read-alikes list that was given and the first one on the list was one of The Walking Dead fiction books by Robert Kirkman.  

       6. I love books that get turned into movies, especially literary ones. Can you recommend some? Nothing too old, maybe just those from the last 5 years or so.

Call Me By Your Name by Andre Aciman, Room by Emma Donoghue, Inherent Vice by Thomas Pychon, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain, and The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers are just a few that I would suggest. I found this by looking at books to movies section on NoveList. From there I click on a couple options till I found one that said Literary fiction was one of the genres and then I did a refined search by scrolling down the page and selecting both literary fiction and books to movies. Once I found some titles I double check that the movies had been released in the last 5 years by doing an IMDB search for the movie.

       7.  I love thrillers but I hate foul language and sex scenes. I want something clean and fast-paced.

I would recommend The Bride Collector by Ted Dekker. This is a fast-paced thriller that has no sex scenes or foul language. This is a book I just finished and like. Ted Dekker is a Christian author who writes clean books but doesn’t try to force religion down your throat.

Part 2:

When I am looking for a new author similar to authors I have read before I like to use NoveList to find read-alikes. I also use NoveList anytime I am trying to find the next book in a series because it is the easiest site I have found to use for this. When I am looking for a new young adult book to read I look at a blog called tween 2 teen book reviews (http://www.tween2teenbooks.com/). This site has a best of whatever year it is with release dates so I know when to start looking for the books I want to read. It has another section called what to read next which gives you ideas of books that you might like after finishing some of the popular YA books. The is another section called top ten suggestions which she changes up when she finds a book that she likes more then what is listed. If I am just wanting to browse through lots of different books and lists I use Goodreads. I like Goodreads because I am able to see what my friends are reading and liking and I usually find about 1 or 2 or 10 books to add to my to-read list (which is never-ending).