Week 12 Prompt: Dynastic, Bombastic, Fantastic

Turbow, Jason. (2017). Dynastic, Bombastic, Fantastic: Reggie, Rollie, Catifsh, and Charlie Finley’s Swingin’ A’s. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

1. Where is the book on the narrative continuum?

A mix. The book chronicles the Oakland A’s from their building in the late 60s through their dismantling in an epic fire sale in the mid 70s. While the book has a strong narrative it has many elements devoted to baseball statistics which, while they take you out of the narrative, are essential to the story.

2. What is the subject of the book?

The subject of the book is the somehow overlooked Oakland A’s baseball team that won three straight World Series from 1972-1974. The book tells the story of the team and the individual players & front office members such as Charles Finley, Reggie Jackson, Catfish Hunter, Rollie Fingers, and many more.

3. What type of book is it?

It is a sports history.

4. Articulate appeal

* What is the pacing of the book?

Similar to a 162 game baseball season, the book has high points and low points. The majority of the book is engrossing but there are other parts that drag a bit.

* Describe the characters of the book.

Every baseball fan recognizes the names Charles Finley, Reggie Jackson, Catfish Hunter, and Rollie Fingers. These were outspoken, larger-than-life men who dominated the world of baseball in the 1970s and eventually made the Hall of Fame. They are essential to the story of Dynastic, Bombastic, Fantastic. But the book equally focuses on some of the other A’s. Some were All Stars and borderline HoF candidates like Joe Rudi and Vida Blue and some were good major league players like Sal Bando and Bert Campanaris. All the players get their due.

* How does the story feel?

Nostalgic, funny, entertaining, authoritative, comprehensive, informative

* What is the intent of the author?

The intent of the author is to chronicle this amazing baseball team that somehow has been overshadowed by other baseball dynasties.

* What is the focus of the story?

The focus of the story is on the team as a whole as well as the individual players and front office figures.

* Does the language matter?

Yes.

* Is the setting important and well described?

Yes.

* Are there details, and if so, of what?

Oh yes! The book is full of all kinds of baseball statistics.

* Are there sufficient charts and other graphic materials?

There are none.

* Does the book stress moments of learning, understanding, or expression?

No.

5. Why would a reader enjoy? (Rank appeal)

            1. The Focus

            2. The Details

            3. The Characters

Non-fiction Annotation: Hillbilly Elegy

Vance, J.D. (2016). Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis. New York: Harper.

Synopsis

Hillbilly Elegy is three books in one. First, it is a memoir. The author, J.D. Vance – a former marine and Yale Law School graduate – shares the story of his chaotic childhood. It’s an unbelievable story filled with alcohol, physical and emotional abuse, drugs, poverty, and so much more. Vance shares his deeply personal story while using it as a sociological study of the cultural decline of the white working class. Finally, Vance transitions to the future and opines about what can be done. It is a stark, unrelenting, brutally honest book that stays with you for weeks and weeks. It’s been touted as one of the “6 books to help you understand Trump’s win” (New York Times) but I think that cheapens what Vance has done. This is a book that, despite all the sadness and dysfunction and negativity, is still filled with love and hope and forgiveness.

Non-fiction Characteristics

Characteristics of Non-fiction books are different from Fiction books. According to The Readers’ Advisory Guide to NonFiction by Neal Wyatt there are four intertwined aspects of non-fiction characteristics: Narrative, Subject, Type, and Appeal.

Narrative: Mixed

As mentioned in my summary, Hillbilly Elegy combines three different books into one. The memoir portion of the book is highly narrative. It chronicles Vance’s life from a very young age to the present day. It reads like fiction and you (the reader) are engrossed in the story. The story of Vance’s life acts as a pull that guides you through the other two parts of the book. Those other parts are not as narrative as the first but they are still engaging enough to keep the reader’s attention. Overall, I would say the book is somewhere in between highly and moderately narrative though closer to the former.

Type: Memoir,

Subject: My library has Hillbilly Elegy classified in the social classes (305.5). I won’t argue with that but I think a case could be made for it to be in biographies.

Appeal Terms:

Genre: Memoir, Life Stories, Society and Culture

Character: Authentic, Relatable

Tone: Moving, Reflective

Writing Style: Candid, Engaging, Thoughtful

Readalikes

White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America – Nancy Isenberg

Evicted  - Matthew Desmond

$2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America – Kathryn Edin

Nickel and Dimed: On Not Getting By in America – Barbara Ehrenreich

Personal Notes 

* Vance’s grandparents grew up in Breathitt County, Kentucky – about an hour and a half southeast of Lexington – and the county is key to his story. That’s an area I know well. I’m a Kentucky boy, born and raised in the Bluegrass state. And while I grew up in Western Kentucky two of my best friends are from the next county over from Breathitt County and I’ve spent a lot of time there over the years. Knowing the area and the people made Vance’s story hit home even harder.

* That being said, this book would appeal to anyone and everyone. I highly recommend it.

* One more Breathitt County tidbit, the country music singer Sturgill Simpson was born in Breathitt County. His album A Sailor’s Guide to Earth was my favorite record of 2016.

* Vance has moved back to Ohio and is starting a non-profit group to help battle the opioid epidemic.

Week Eleven Prompt: E-books, Audiobooks, and RA Services

It’s funny, when I first read the prompt for this week’s discussion topic I had a kneejerk response:

How do ebooks and audiobooks change appeal factors? Easy, they don’t. Boom. Discussion post done. Time to turn on the college basketball game and eat nachos.

I initially saw the question of audiobooks/ebooks being more of a technology question rather than something that affected the appeal factors of a book. After all, the book is still the book. How a reader takes in that book doesn’t affect what they’re taking in. It doesn’t affect the style, tone, characters, plot, or pace. I have spent a lot of time talking with patrons about what they’re looking for in a book and, separately, what they’re looking for in a device. They’re separate things and separate conversations.

But the more I thought about it the more I started to change my tune. One of my supervisors has a saying that she likes to use during our staff meetings (one that several of you have probably heard): books are our business. So, if how a patron reads/hears a book impacts they’re enjoyment of the book than it absolutely matters. In her 2011 guest column entitled “E-books and Readers’ Advisory” in Reference and User Services Quarterly, Katie Dunneback writes that, “the format you use to access the story expands the appeal factors of the content.” Dunneback lists several different possible factors including the display options, size and weight of the device, and various accessories. It's not that the devices affect the established appeal factors, it's that they add new and different appeal factors to the already crowded slate.

Another major appeal factor strictly for audiobooks is the reader. I have heard many times from patrons who have had to stop an audiobook because they didn’t like the reader. Conversely, I’ve heard numerous times from patrons who felt that the reader played a major role in their enjoyment of the book. (Jim Dale, who did the Harry Potter books, is one often cited.) I have one patron who adores Scott Brick so much that she only listens to the books he narrates.

Dunneback points out that, “this convergence of readers’ advisory and consumer information reference requires excellence in the skill set common to reference services and readers’ advisory services.” And I think that’s a good point. So many of us are already offering assistance with devices that it’s an easy transition. We just have to start thinking about our technology advisory services as part of our readers’ advisory services.

Book Club Experience

The Lakeville Library Book Club is the longest running book club in the St. Joseph County Public Library system. In November of 2016 the club celebrated its 10th anniversary with a special trip to Stacks, a library themed restaurant in Valparaiso. In the ten years they’ve been together, the LLBC has read more than 130 books. In the beginning they chose two books per month – one fiction and one nonfiction – but soon decided that that was just too much work. The club meets in the Lakeville Branch meeting room normally on the second Thursday of the month.

The group is entirely female. That has not always been the case. There have been a few members over the years that were men. The meeting is advertised in the library’s calendar of events so from time to time a man will show up but as far as anyone in the group can remember, I was the first man to be at the book club in several years.

There is a core group of eight women though the group can get as big as 20. The women prefer the smaller group size because it allows for better conversation. There are also numerous Lakeville Branch patrons who do not attend but like to read the book the book club is reading. (The library has a display up that showcases both the current and previous book club selections.) There is not a defined leader of the group. There is one current Lakeville Branch staff member who is involved and two former Lakeville Branch staff member. The current member makes sure everyone gets their copy of the book for the month and sends out reminders about the meeting but she does not lead. In fact, there really isn’t a leader of the book club. The youngest woman in the group is in her mid 40s and the oldest is in her late 80s. Additionally, some of these women have known each other for decades. The majority of the women have been in the group since the very beginning. Only one of the members when I was there joined the group within the last five years. She is still jokingly called “the new girl” though she’s known most of the members for a long time.

What strikes an outside observer right away is that the book club is really a book club/social club. I arrived 15 minutes early and there were already four members in the room deep into conversation. Every time a new member arrived (12 women came in all) they were greeted with hugs. Each woman brought some sort of snack or desert though most of it goes uneaten. It’s not that they don’t like the food – everyone raved about Rosemary’s pie or Kathy’s cheese dip – but the women were too busy talking and laughing to eat. And the laughing! I don’t know if I’ve ever heard so much laughing! The women had a wonderful time and it was absolutely infectious. I would dare anyone to sit in a LLBC meeting and not have a good time.

The first half hour of the meeting was spent socializing. Lakeville is a very small town but some of the women in the group no longer actually live in the city. One member drives roughly 40 minutes to attend the club. This is the only chance many of them to see each other every month. One woman, Sue, hadn’t been in a long time and everyone made a big fuss over seeing her again. Another woman, Sharon, had recently lost her mother and everyone was very happy to see her out and about again. They talk about everything under the sun and there were multiple phones being passed around showing off photos of children, grandchildren, and pets. After a lull in the conversation, one of the members – Kay, the oldest member of the group – picked up her copy of The Dry and said, “Well…what did everyone think?” Before anyone had a chance to answer, Kay emphatically announced, “I loved it.”

If the first thing an observer notices is how social the group is than the second thing is that the women in the group have no problem telling each other their opinion. There did not appear to be anyone holding back. It quickly became clear that (1) the group rarely reads a book like The Dry, which is a very dark murder-mystery and (2) not everyone in the group is happy about that. Kay, for example, spoke quite a bit about how it was nice to read something that was more than, what she called, “fluffy nonsense.” The group reads a lot of historical fiction and most of it is romantic. They do read the occasional mystery but it is always much lighter. For example, in December they read The Bark Before Christmas. They used to do a lot of classics but they haven’t done one in a very long time. Opinion of The Dry was mostly positive. There were some who loved it. One woman, Sherry, said that she was surprised at how much she enjoyed the book because she typically does not like books like The Dry. But she added that she doesn’t want to read another like it for a while because it kept her up at night. Another woman, Sheri (there were three women named Sherry in the group and all three Sherrys were spelled differently!), was quite comfortable telling the group that she did not finish reading it because it was vulgar and it offended her as a Christian. (No one responded to this. One woman informed me later that Sheri says that about most of the books they pick. They also pointed out that at least she tries to read the book every month.) I was asked my opinion and I told the group that I really enjoyed it but most of the discussion about the book really focused on whether or not the group should read more titles like The Dry going forward. In the end it was kind of decided that they should but maybe not for a few months.

The last 1/3rd of the meeting was spent debating what their next book should be. Nearly everyone had a suggestion. Some suggestions were made with explanations and others were not. The current library staff member (who was not actually working during the meeting) wrote down all of the titles. There were approximately 25. Most were newer titles. A few were from authors that the group had previously read. A woman named Decky (yes, Decky with a “D”) suggested that the group spend all of 2017 reading classics and thought that they should start with Emma. Kathy, the former staff member, thought they should read Hillbilly Elegy. There were numerous romantic historical fiction or light mystery suggestions. One woman whose name I did not catch suggested the group read several of the James Patterson’s Book Shots. They also flipped through the pages of Book Page and Booklist to get ideas. It was fun to watch the process of figuring out what the next book would be. In the end they went with The Runaway Midwife by Patricia Harmon. Hillbilly Elegy was a close second and several of the women announced that they were going to read it anyway and maybe they could talk about it at the next meeting as well. I was told that this was not abnormal. It almost seemed like there was the book club and then a series of splinter book clubs within the book club!

The meeting started at 6:00 and by the time they had made their pick for next month it was past 7:30. The women started to clean up but it was more social time than anything else. During this social time, though, the group separated into smaller groups. The women got up and moved around. There were several one-on-one conversations as well as a couple larger group conversations. The women didn’t leave until 8:00 when the library closed and even then several of them stuck around in the parking lot.