Week 12 prompt

The Readers’ Advisory Matrix

Talking As Fast As I Can: From Gilmore Girls to Gilmore Girls, (and Everything in Between) by Lauren Graham

11.       Where is the book on the narrative continuum?

a.       Highly narrative (reads like fiction)

b.      A mix (combines highly narrative moment with periods of fact-based prose)

c.       Highly fact-based (has few or no narrative moments)

22.       What is the subject of the book? This book is about the life of Lauren Graham and her time she acted on Gilmore Girls. It gives a brief history of how she got started as an actress.

33.       What type of book is it? Memoir

44.       Articulate appeal

a.       What is the pacing of the book? It has a fast pace and is a quick read.

b.      Describe the characters of the book. This story focuses on the life of Lauren Graham and the time she has spent acting. It goes from her early actress career where she wanted to be a Broadway start to her learning that she really didn’t want to be a headliner of a Broadway musical.

c.       How does the story feel? Happy, sad, and funny

d.      What is the intent of the author? To talk about her experience as an actress and inform everyday people some of the things you don’t know that happen behind the scenes.

e.      What is the focus of the story? Her acting career.

f.        Does the language matter? Yes

g.       Is the setting important and well described? The setting is several different places that she acted at. It is important to tell you about what she was doing at the different times.

h.      Are there details and, if so, of what? Yes about her life and the different sets she acted on.

i.         Are there sufficient charts and other graphic materials? Are they useful and clear? The only graphic materials that are in the book are pictures. These pictures represent different times in her life and help bring the story full circle.

j.        Does the book stress moments of learning, understanding, or experience? She has one part in particular that helps stress a learning moment but could be seen as all three, when she was auditing for a part that would have got her actor card and she had to show her nude butt because then needed to find the best butt. At the time before doing it she didn’t think anything about it but after she thought about it she realizes how deeming it was and that she didn’t feel comfortable doing it again if that was all the audition was.  

55.       Why would a reader enjoy this book (rank appeal)?

1.       Tone                                       2.  Pacing                       3. Detail

Literary Fiction: Atonement

Title: Atonement

Author: Ian McEwan

Genre: Literary Fiction

Publication Date: 2001

Number of Pages: 351

Geographical Setting: England

Time Period: 20^th century

Plot Summary:

Briony Tallis is in love with the written word and decides that she want to put on a play for her bothers return to the manor. She recruits her cousin who has come to live with them because their parents are splitting up. Briony gets mad at her cousin and calls off the play and decides to take a walk out on the ground on the night of the dinner and run into Robbie Turner (who is the gardener) and he gives her a letter to give to her sister Cecilia. Since Briony is curious she reads the letter which is not the letter Robbie attended to send and Briony becomes upset. When she later finds Robbie and Cecilia in the library she thinks that her sister is being attacked by Robbie. When the twins run away later that night and everyone is out looking for them Briony comes upon her cousin Lola being attacked in the dark she assumes it is Robbie because of the note and what she thought she saw in the library. This gets Robbie sent to prison and in order to get an early release, he joins the army. The second half of the book is Robbie track to Dunkirk. Briony tries to make up for what she did as a child once she figures out that it was someone else who attacked Lola. Will Briony be able to make up for all the hurt she caused as a child or will her sister and Robbie always hate her?

Subject Headings:

·         Sisters

·         Guilt in Women

·         Rich families

·         Shame

·         Thirteen-year-old girls

·         Former convicts

·         Rural life

·         Social classes

·         Regret

·         Redemption

Appeal:

·         Character-driven

·         Leisurely paced

·         Haunting

·         Unreliable narrator

Elements of Literary Fiction:

Style/Langue: Words are woven together elegant and the structure of the novel itself may be more complex (Saricks, 178). In this book, you notice that the langue seems to be very descriptive and picked very carefully. I remember thinking that the words were very important and he was able to paint the scene using them.

Characters: In literary fiction, characters can become more important than storylines, and the question is center more around characters then the story (Saricks, 178). This is true in this book that Brinoy is the character that has caused all the problems and is then trying to fix them. She is a multi-dimensional character and is often unpredictable.

Story Line: Are thought-provoking, often consider universal dilemmas and endings are often open or ambiguous (Saricks, 178). In this story, you have Brinoy who unwittingly accuses someone of a crime they didn’t comment and has to try and make up for these mistakes through her life. The ending is kind of ambiguous where you don’t know what happened to everyone in the end.

Pace: slower since these books are usually densely written (Saricks, 178). This story does have a leisurely pace more so at the beginning and starts to pick up some when you get to the second half of the book.

Tone: Usually dark because of the seriousness of the issues (Saricks, 178). I found this book to be very dark because it is dealing with falsely accusing someone of rape, then later that person is sent off to war, and Briony is never sure if she is going to be able to make it up to Robbie or her sister.

Similar Authors and Works:

Read-alikes Nonfiction

The Innocents by Taryn Simon: for those who want to read more about people that have been falsely accused of a crime they didn’t commit.

Dunkirk: Fight to the Last Man by Hugh Sebag-Montefiore: for those who would enjoy reading more about Dunkirk which Atonement talks about in the second half.

Life After Death by Damien Echols: This book is a biography about a man that was falsely accused of a crime and spent 18 years on death row. This would be for someone who was wanting to read more on the falsely accused.

Read-alikes Fiction

A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson: both are literary historical novels set in the 20^th century, spanning both war and peace times.

The Outcast by Sadie Jones: Both are literary novels set in the 20^th century England, reflective narratives of secrets, and shame and guilt. In both children make decisions that have unintended consequences.

The Surrendered by Chang-rae Lee: Both books examine events that occur early in characters’ lives that impact who they become.

Week 11 prompt

I use both ebooks and audiobooks on a near daily bases. Ebooks are nice for me when I read at night so I don’t have to use a light which bugs, my husband, less but I hate using them on kindle since it only gives you percentage and speed time and not page numbers. This makes it so much hard to judge how much of the book I have left and how long it is going to take me to finish the book. I like audiobooks for when I am driving to work or to see family, when I go for walks or mow the lawn, and for when I am just sitting on the couch and knitting. In the article “Reading With Your Ears” Kaite Mediatore talks about how “commuters with long drives or regular traffic snarls find cars the perfect place to catch up on reading and keep tempers in check” (318). I never thought about how books can help with keeping tempers down in these types of situations but it makes sense if you mind is on some other things it will help keep you calmer. Pacing can be affected in both audiobooks and ebook depending on the way they are recorded. When thinking about ebooks Katie Dunneback states that “pacing is also affected by how much text is visible on the screen, so the larger the text, the less there is to indicate how quickly the story is moving” (328). This is one of the things I like about ebooks is that I can change the font size I never thought about it affect the pacing of the book itself. Pacing can also be affected in audiobooks by the narrator who can read the story to slow or too fast and change what the pacing of the book should be (Mediatore, 319). I had one patron tell me that she loved listening to mystery books but determined she shouldn’t be listening to them in the car after she ran a stop sign because she was too into a book. Knowing what people are looking for in an audiobook is important there have been several books that I stopped listening to because of the narrator and instead went and read the print book and loved it. When listening to audiobooks I enjoy ones that make a full production out of them. They keep me better entertained, one that I still remember to this day is “The Hobbit” by J.R.R. Tolkien which was the broadcast that was on the National Public Radio and later recorded. I just remember enjoy the fact that when they were at Bilbo Baggins house and started signing that there was singing in the background on the audiobook.  

Works Cited

Dunneback, Katie. "E-books and Readers' Advisory." Reference & User Services Quarterly, vol. 50, no. 4, Summer 2011, pp. 325-329.

Mediator, Katie. "Reading With Your Ears: Readers' Advisory and Audio Book." Readers' Advisory, vol. 42, no. 4, Summer 2003, pp. 318-323.

Book Club

I attend a book club that meets once a month at a bar here in town. This group is lead by one of the librarians from the Muncie Public Library, named Anthony.  Anthony will ask questions about the book but will let others answer those before he adds any input himself. The group has anywhere between 8 to 12 people at each meeting. This past month we discussed “A Wrinkle in Time”. The first part of the meeting was talking about whether or not we liked the book. This helps to get the discussion going and I always enjoy hearing why people did or did not enjoy a book. For this particular book, it was about 50/50 with people who liked it and those who didn’t. There is one lady that comes every month and she has only enjoyed one book that we have read in the last year and a half but she still enjoys coming to discuss the books. From the initial point, Anthony asks more questions to get the conversation going. He usually only has to ask around 5 questions for the evening in order to cover the whole book. He looks up information from different websites to help build on the conversation. The questions that he asks are ones that take more than a yes or no answer. If that is all that is given he asks for people to elaborate.

        During the meeting, all the participants contribute to the conversation. Every once in a while there is one person that will try and take over the discussion but Anthony does a good job at trying to bring others into the conversation. When this person is talking he is talking about the book and will answer the question that is being asked. Every once the conversation will stray into other areas of life and the world but Anthony will bring the focus back to the group purpose. The majority of the people that come to book group will read at least 50 percent of the book so the discussion will follow along with the themes of the book well.

        The meeting is held on the third Thursday of every month at the same bar.  This particular location is typically not very crowded, looks pleasing and is not very loud.  In the past, we have asked the owner to turn the music down during discussion times and they have been really easy to work with. Since we are at a bar most of the participants buy themselves a beer or a glass of wine.  Since the bar doesn’t have food Anthony will sometimes bring in snacks but it seems to rotate with others in the group sharing this, ‘responsibility’.

        This group reads books that are at least 20 years old or older. We have done “The Handmaids Tale”, “A Wrinkle in Time”, “Mrs. Dalloway”, and “Brave New World” to name a few. Each year Anthony comes up with a list of 100 books that he asks us to pull from for 25 titles. He then narrows it down to the 12 that we read through the next year.

Special Topic Paper

My special topic paper was on in-person and online RA. I looked at what in-person RA is which could be indirect or direct. In-person RA can be anything from a person coming to the information desk asking for a good book (direct) to a book display within the library on a specific topic (indirect). I go on to talk about the different ways libraries on using online RA.

With in-person RA I talked about Mary K's Generic rules of RA which she developed after having her student do secret shopper interactions. They were a total of eleven rules but I just pulled out the following:

• Listen to the user and try to find out what the person likes and/or loathes reading before you do anything else.
• Ignore what you like to read unless you're sure it matches what the reader likes.
• Find out if the person wants something else by the same author before suggesting it.
• Use the library's catalog only after you have a clear idea of what the person is interested in and be sure to verify any suggestions with the library's collection (that they are owned, on the shelf, etc.)
• Explain what you are doing as you search, especially if you are using an electronic tool, such as NoveList. Tell them how they can use it themselves.
• Unless the user tells you that there is some urgency, ask for some more time and offer to phone or email a result at a later time (Smith, 13).

These were just a few that I put in the paper that I felt were the most important. 

Online RA is blogs, microblogs (Twitter), Facebook, Pinterest, and form-based RA. Form-based RA was said to have started in Williamsburg (VA) Regional Library where they created a form to be either filled out online or picked up in the library, filled out, and then turned back in. This gives the librarian time to make better selections for patrons. I listed the following libraries that I found that have form-based RA on their website:

• Anderson Public Library: https://www.and.lib.in.us/looking-for-a-good-book-adults
• Hamilton East Public Library: https://hepl.lib.in.us/my-next-book/
• New York Publick Library: https://www.nypl.org/books-music-movies/recommendations/ask-us
• Brooklyn Public Library: https://bklynlibrary.org/bookmatch
• Jefferson-Madison Regional Library: https://jmrl.org/pr-readers.htm
• Williamsburg Regional Library: https://www.wrl.org/books-and-reading/adults/find-good-book/looking-good-book-reader-profile-forms

Many different libraries use blogs to post book review and suggestion. Microblogging has become popular to post book title and library events. Pinterest has become a place where some librarians have made booklists. 

Smith, Duncan. “Readers’ Advisory: The Who, the How, and the Why.” Reference & User Services Quarterly, vol. 54, no. 4, Summer 2014, pp. 11-16. Academic Search Premier, https://www.statelib.lib.in.us/inspire/authenticate-eds.asp?url=http%3a%2f%2fsearch.ebscohost.com%2flogin.aspx%3fdirect%3dtrue%26AuthType%3dcookie%2cgeo%2curl%2cip%26geocustid%3ds8475741%26db%3daph%26AN%3d103412239%26site%3deds-live%26scope.