Week Three Prompt

Part One

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!

A: Bloody Bones

Search for Laurell Hamilton. Looking through the results you will see some of the Anita Blake titles. Any of these titles will have a series tag of “Anita Blake” on it. By clicking on that series tag you will see (in order) all of the Anita Blake titles.

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 first thing I did was go to Barbara Kingsolver’s page on NoveList to see some of the book appeal terms used to describe her work. Then I went to the “Browse By” option at the top and clicked on “Appeal.” There are three drop down options that you can use to set the parameters for your search. Two of the drop down options will be used specifically for appeal criteria that match Kingsolver’s work. The third drop down option can be used to select “Fast-paced” for the book’s pace. Depending on what other criteria you opt for, you get different results. If the patron was with me I would have him/her pick which appeal terms were most important.

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!

I did a basic keyword search for “Japan” and then limited the results to “Fiction” and “Adult” and set the location to “Japan.” That gives me 1,755 results so I would want to ask a few follow up questions to find out more about the patron is looking for!

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 do a search for Well Schooled in Murder and then click on Author read-alikes for Elizabeth George. Of the nine authors listed – Ruth Rendell, Peter Robinson, Tana French, Louise Penny, Deborah Crombie, Dorothy Sayers, PD James, Carol Goodman, and Erin Hart - I don’t think any are particularly creepy so each one would be a good option.

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?

A: If the patron is looking for a personal recommendation than they’re out of luck! I can’t handle scary things! But luckily there’s NoveList to help us out. I did a search for World War Z and then clicked on Title read-alikes. There are nine titles listed, some that I recognize. For the record, I would also ask a co-worker who is a fan of the genre for their personal recommendations. That’s always a good thing to consider. For example, I work at a branch with a lot of patrons who love Christian fiction. I don’t know the genre very well but one of my co-workers knows it cold.

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.

I went to the advanced search section and clicked on Browse/Appeal. In the box next to the “Browse for” I typed in “books into movies.” The subject “BOOKS TO MOVIES” was the second option. I clicked on that and then changed the limiter for publication date to 2011-2016 so that it would only show the books that had been published in the last five years. There were quite a few titles, though most were thrillers, suspense, or mystery. I would suggest the most recent Dave Eggers novel, The Circle. The movie adaptation comes out later this year.

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

I struggled a bit with this one. My best guess would be to use a Boolean search. I went through the list of possible Appeal terms but there wasn’t one that perfectly matched up. I played around with a variety of terms including “Gruesome” (using NOT in the search), “Chaste,” and several others but it felt like whenever I combined two of the terms together I got very poor results. In the end, I opted for using just “Thrillers and Suspense” NOT “Explicit” as my search. There were a lot of results and I opted to go for the most recent John Grisham title as a recommendation. It is certainly fast-paced and Grisham, in general, does not have bad language and gratuitous sex scenes.

Part Two

There are five ways that I find books to read:

1. Word of mouth – Whether it be from patrons, co-workers, family, friends, or random folks around town, a large number of the books I read come from personal recommendations. Some times they’re books I’ve never heard of, but more often the personal recommendation is the extra bit of oomph I need to pick up a book I’m already aware of.

2. Library magazines – I go through a variety of magazines (Library Journal, School Library Journal, Booklist, New York Times Book Review, etc.) every month.

3. My list – I keep a list of favorite books/authors and will periodically check every few months to see if any of the authors have new books coming out.

4. Websites/Blogs – I use blogs most often for baseball books but will occasionally use them for non-baseball books, too. I also use Amazon quite a bit. I’m not very active on social media so I’m limited to non social media sites.

5. The Great Delivery – We receive new materials almost every morning at my branch in a big grey box. Opening that box is like opening presents on Christmas morning. I usually find a book or two (usually kids books) every week that I was unaware of.