W9A3 - Conclusion

This training was very instructive. I particularly liked two elements of it: the resources we explored all along and the review of the appeal factors.

Publisher weekly and Early Word are my two favorites resources discovered during this training. I still receive their weekly emails about recent and upcoming publications. They summarize the bigger news in the industry in a single page, and it usually only takes few minutes to be informed about new books and trends. If something catches my attention, I can simply go on their website to learn more about it. But there are other resources as well. Those resources are the ones I don’t follow regularly, but I am now aware of their existence and I can refer to them when needed. I am thinking about The New York Best Seller List, NPR Book, Indie Next Best Seller List and the different websites specialized in particular genre (Mystery, Romance, Science-fiction, Fantasy and Urban). The first three are useful when customers ask about new and popular books they might be interested in. As for the resources about genres, they are helpful to offer customer information beyond the simple book cover. Finally, websites like Goodreads and Novelist are full of information valuable for reader advisory. I find the public comments to be great on Goodreads. They are an easy way to find what readers think of a specific title. Novelist is very good for the read-alike option. I particularly like the Novelist search engine based on the appeal factors.

Appeal factors is precisely the other main expertise I gained from this training. I have heard about the appeal factors before this training, but I cannot say I knew them well. It was very helpful to not only study them, but also to use them during the weekly exercises. Now I can spread my conversation with patrons with words like pacing, tone, setting and characterization. Appeal factors give me tools to describe books in ways patron can understand easily. In fact, my favorite approach to use them is called the doorway method by Nancy Pearl. There are four doorways: story, setting, character and language. They are the major appeal factors known by customers and the easier to use in order to describe a book. I also liked how Be More Bookish made us use them, in a brief and short paragraph. I already wrote book reviews before for school, but it was in an academic setting. At work, people want to have the big picture in less than two minutes. This training made us practice those real life situations.

Overall, Be More Bookish was an excellent training. Like any online classes or workshops, I think one or two in-person meetings would have been a good addition to the training. One meeting around the third week and one around the sixth week for example. I think those meeting would have encourage group discussions and comments. Nothing is better than meeting somebody in person to break the ice.

W9A1 & 2

Pamela Paul’s article was published in 2010. At the time, she wrote that book trailers are “fast becoming an essential component of online marketing”. Five years later, book trailers can be found on YouTube and on publishers’ websites, but they are hardly essential to anything, even to online marketing campaigns. She mentioned book trailers awards called Moby givens by the Melville House Publisher, but they do not even exist anymore. 2012 seems to be the last year they were awarded. Our present does not look the way she predicted it.

The Nina Metz’s article was published two later years, in 2012. I think that year was especially bad for the book trailers, because, contrary to Pamela Paul, she did not have anything good to write about them. They were “cheap, schlocky, boring, lackluster, unimaginative”. Even the name “book trailer” is not good not enough for her. I think things have changed a little bit since. First, the quality of book trailers is a little bit better nowadays. They are more professional and visually more attractive. However, I agreed with Metz that reading is an act of “imaginative personalization”. For example, I was very disappointed by the book trailer of Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell. Not only because the quality and originality was incredibly low, but also because the characters did not look the way I imagined them. Imagination is deeply personal, and reading activates the imagination in a subjective matter. Movie trailers give you a peak of what you will see on screen, but I rather have an idea about a book instead of a visual representation.

Personally, I think book trailers will become more and more present around us, but it will take some times. Time to achieve and develop the art of book trailers. A good book cover is not a simple representation of one character or the setting of a story. It’s something more subtle and more appealing (one can think of classics like Catch 22, Catching in the Rye, To Kill a Mockingbird, Fahrenheit 451, etc.). I think book trailers should follow the same path, and create a distinct aesthetic. Is book trailer useful for readers’ advisory? Yes and no. Yes, if they follow the wrong path and continue to represent the story like a movie adaptation will do. Instead a reading a summary of the book, we could watch the book trailer. No, if book trailers become an art on its own and not a simple representation of the story. In this case, book trailers are useless for reader’s advisory but they can be a good marketing tool. Good marketing is not always selling the product directly, but it sells a world and an idea surrounding the product.

W8A4

Awakenings by Oliver Sacks (616.832 S 1990)

In honor of Oliver Sacks who recently passed away, I wanted to talk about Awakenings. First published in 1973, it is a good example of popular science writing and narrative non-fiction. This books was not written for academics but for the general public. In this half memoir half psychiatric review, Sacks describes the return to life of decade long catatonic patients. A new drug takes them out of their stupor, but unfortunately it only will be for a short period of time. As they are slowing but inevitable coming back to an unresponsive state, patients and staff start to appreciate being alive in the present. By exploring the fringe of human sickness and mental capacities, Sacks also exposes the universal human needs for love, respect and curiosity.

The characters are touching and genuine. The writing is delightful and full of facts and details, in a perfect combination of data and human feelings. Readers who like both scientific knowledge that resides on empiric experiences and sensitivity from the human point of view would also like this book. No need to be a die-hard science lover, the desire to share the concerns and discovery of characters who are amazed by the world around them is enough. The story is so plausible and credible (not because it is a based on a true story, but because of the plot’s structure) that one could read this book like a novel, with its own set of characters and series of adventures.

The wet and the dry: a drinker’s journey by Lawrence Osborne (910.4 O)

This book is combination of a travel diary, essays and technical descriptions on the art of making different kind of alcohol. The premise is simple and radical at the same time. Osborne decided to travel in countries where alcohol is either shunned or simply illegal. Most of those countries are Muslim, where alcohol is banned according to the Islamic law. At first, Osborne only seems to travel to provoke his hosts. But very soon something else emerge from his trip. By comparing the permissive western civilization with the culture of prohibition found in many places, Osborne paints two worldviews with their benefits and their shortcomings. At the end, the book is not only about drink, but about mentality, cultures, politics and international relations.

This book is funny and instructive. Nobody will read this book to learn how to make alcohol, yet one can find a lot of information between the author’s jokes. The plot is thin, but like a trip, the destination is not always the goal. The story make us travel not only around the world, but back in times as well. The writing style reminds me of Paul Bowles or Ian McEwan: one or two main characters meet very interesting people, but those meeting are elusive, just for few pages. The comparison with those writers is not anodyne, this book read like a narrative fiction. Even more, when the main character is under the influence of alcohol, we are not sure if Osborne is talking about reality or a dream.

W8A3

1. Travel

                Dewey: 910 (between 910 and 919) Geography & travel

                Example: The wet and the dry: a drinker’s journey by Lawrence Osborne                                  (910.4 O)

2. Sport

                Dewey: 790 (between 790 and 799) Sports, games & entertainment

                Example: The boys in the boat: nine Americans and their epic quest for                                     gold at the 1936 Olympics by Daniel Brown (797.123 B)

3. Medical

                Dewey: 610 (Between 610 and 619) Medicine & Health

                Example: Awakenings by Oliver Sacks (616.832 S 1990)

4. Contemporary social issues

                Dewey: 300 (between 300 and 309) Social Sciences, sociology &                                                                                                anthropology

                              360 (between 360 and 369) Social problems & social services

                Example: Missoula: rape and the justice system in a college town by                                           Jon Krakauer (362.888K)

W8A2

This short video is a good summary of nonfiction genre. It includes the different types (biography, memoirs, history, contemporary social issues, politics, science, essays, sports, travel, food, crime, faith, overcoming adversity, adventure, disaster/survival, medical), the appeal factors (popularity, format, size of volume, type size, length, reading difficulty, plot/story line, characters, dialogue, writing style, time period, theme, pacing, setting. tone and genre), and some tips about the genre. Short and well-done.

W8A1

Both texts (Borderland: Crossing between Fiction and Nonfiction in Readers’ Advisory by Jennifer Brannen and Reading Nonfiction for pleasure: What Motivates Readers? by Catherine Sheldrick Ross) said the same thing in substance. While libraries physically and clearly separate fiction from non-fiction, readers do not always make that distinction, especially with narrative fiction with story and characters development. If a reader reads for “pleasure”, most of the time s/he will not care about the separation between fiction and narrative nonfiction. What really attract a reader is the appeal factors and interest, not books categorization. During a reader’s advisory interview, librarians should focus on those, the appeal factors, and suggest titles from both nonfiction and fiction genres. This way, readers can decide what they are in the mood to read, independently of the books classification. The idea beyond those two texts is the distinction between nonfiction and fiction is not the same as the distinction between pleasure reading and fact-finder reading. People read fiction and nonfiction for pleasure.

W7A4 - Publishers

I look at Penguin Teen and Teens@Random, two publishing houses I always like for their editorial policies and choices. Based on those publishing websites and my own experience, I see two major trends in the Y.A.

First it is the science-fiction trend, like the success of Hunger Games had demonstrated. Penguin has many series that can fit in the categories. It goes from Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead (the action takes place in a boarding school a la Harry Porter), to Matched by Ally Condie (a dystopia world) and Legend by Marie Lu (there is a new Republic western America is fighting for its survival against its neighbors). Not only series, but also books like Triple Moon by Melissa de la Cruz, in which two twins are witches, or The Rose Society by Marie Lu, that shows Adelina overwhelms by her own superpowers. As far as Random House goes, there are Silver Eve by Sandra Waugh, Dark Shimmer by Donna Jo Napoli and Rogue by Mark Frost. They all involved a teenager as the main character, and they all take place in a somehow different world than our regular earth.

The other major trend I see is books in the same vein of Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell. They are stories about teens looking for themselves, and who try to understand the world around them. They often touch subjects like love, self-confidence, responsibilities, friendship, etc. Everything a teenager faces before becoming an adult. Random just published Drowning is Inevitable by Shalanda Stanley. It is the story of a young girl who lost her mother and other horrible circumstances bring her and her friends on the road to New Orleans. Random also published Wonders of the Invisible World by Christopher Barzak about a 17 years old boy who starts to develop feelings for his old friend who just came back in the farming community. Penguin also has its lot of books from this second trend. The Boy Most likely To by Huntley Fitzpatrick. When they should not like each other, Tim and Alice fall in love. But we don’t always do what we are “suppose” to do. Juniors by Kaui Hart Hemmings is about a junior high school girl who keep moving around because her actress mother. But she is tired to always be the new girl. She finally finds a friendship and love, but her new friends are different and she has to decide how much she is willing to change in order to fit in their world.

The second trend is more classic, more traditional teen subjects. But today books have something than the old ones. They sound more authentic. I think, writers do not try anymore to preach to the teenagers, but just to connect with them. To me, the first trend is a direct descendant of the success of Harry Potter ten years ago. It opened the door to a new, and in a way less childish, Y.A. genre.