Readers' Advisory Spring 2020

Sci-Fi Annotation: Author: Philip K. Dick Title: A Maze of Death Genre: Sci-fi Publication date: 1970 Number of pages: 190 Geographical setting: Fictional planets: Tekel Upharsin and Delmark-O Time period: In the distant future after Earth is deemed uninhabitable.  Plot summary: This book follows fourteen people who have been "reassigned" to a planet called Delmark-O. While each character seems integral to the story, the main character is Seth Morley, a marine biologist. Morley and his wife are reassigned to Delmark-O after Morley prays for a transfer. The prayer is processed by the Interprocessor (One part of a future religion founded by a man named Specktowsky who wrote a book called How I Rose From the Dead in My Spare Time and So Can You , the future Bible equivalent) and Morley and his wife make their way to their newly assigned planet. When they arrive they meet the others, people with various jobs and seemingly nothing in common. N...

Week 7 Prompt Response: I'd like to respond to the article 5 Hoax Memoirs Still Worth Reading https://www.barnesandnoble.com/blog/5-hoax-memoirs-still-worth-reading/ I'm glad that someone else out there shares my views about these books. I've always maintained that they are still worth reading, they just have to be read as fiction and not fact, just like the article says. I have A Million Little Pieces and Go Ask Alice on my shelves to read. I think they can still be fascinating stories, as long as you start reading them with the knowledge that they aren't true. It also adds another aspect to the book when you know the author fabricated parts of it. In that way, it can read like an entirely different book with the reader trying to understand why the author felt the need to lie to their audience. Even the book mentioned in the first paragraph, The Awful Disclosures , sounds interesting to me and I would still read it knowing that it is all made up. It also makes y...

Week 6 Prompt Response: I think the best way to promote horror books at my library would be with a catchy display. My library usually has at least four displays for books going at any one time and the patrons really seem to respond positively to them and regularly check out materials from them. Since I have worked there, I haven't seen a horror display specifically. I think it would be great to have a horror display at a time that's not Halloween since horror can be read at any time and its fans tend to be pretty devout. So a horror display at any time of year could be eye-catching and popular. I was exploring Pinterest and found some very cool ideas. I really like the ones that change the overall shape of the display like the haunted house one below. I was thinking maybe a coffin shaped display with horizontal shelves would be really cool and could be used for a scary movie display or a Halloween prop at a later time. Here are pictures from Pinterest of my favorite horror di...

Horror Annotation: Author: F.G. Cottam  Title: The Waiting Room   Genre: Horror  Publication date: 2010  Number of pages: 294 Geographical setting: England (London and the rural Kent-Sussex border) Time period: Modern day (2010) and also WWI era  Plot summary: Julian Creed hosts a network television ghost hunting program in which he pretends to be psychic and viewers believe in his gift. One particular viewer is Martin Stride, a retired 80s rock star. Stride privately approaches Creed to investigate an abandoned railway stop, a waiting room, on his large country estate. Stride tells Creed of the strange sights and sounds his two children have experienced while playing near the waiting room. Creed listens intently to Stride but all he sees are dollar signs and the opportunity to film an episode at the waiting room, which Stride is totally against. Creed decides to spend a night in the abandoned railway stop and experi...

Week 5 Prompt Response: From my experience (not a lot), collection development is very review based, at least it is at my library. When there is buzz about a new book coming out, it is important for us to know so that we can order the right amount of copies to meet the demand of patrons. Patrons will also see and hear reviews or author interviews about upcoming books and ask if the library plans to purchase it, and if so, they want to be on the hold list. Therefore, the fact that some books are heavily reviewed while entire genres don't receive a lot of publicity, affects collection development in a skewed way. If the library only buys what is reviewed positively or what patrons ask for, some variety is lost, especially in regards to the not often reviewed genres like romance. Both reviews of The Billionaire's First Christmas seem legitimate, but the blog review seems like something written just to have something to post to the blog. The Amazon review seems to really be roo...

Kirkus Style Review:  The Magus by John Fowles (1965) A young man runs away from a relationship in England, only to end up on a Greek island in the midst of a life-changing mystery.  Nicholas Urfe, looking for a way out of a relationship he just can't seem to commit to, takes on a job teaching English at an all boys private school on the island of Phraxos in Greece. Urfe is on the island for a few weeks before discovering a beach while out exploring. On the beach are a pair of flippers, a towel, and one of his favorite books full of annotations. Hoping the items were left by a beautiful woman, Urfe sticks around only to find out they belong to a Greek man in his sixties named Maurice Conchis who owns a home a little ways from the beach. Conchis is very wealthy with many possessions to show off (paintings, statues, land). He invites Urfe to stay with him on weekends and to tell him the story of his life which is a whole other novel in itself. The mysteries beg...

Secret Shopper Assignment Summary For my assignment, I went to a circulation desk and asked for a book with a lot of twists and turns. I didn't necessarily want a thriller, but I guess that's the only name for it. The librarian I encountered had a little trouble coming up with a book I would accept. She asked me about a couple before landing on one I decided to try. And when I asked what tools she had been using, she told me it was "just Google,". I didn't really have the conversation I was hoping to have with a librarian about book recommendations, but the librarian was pleasant even if she didn't help me in the ways I wanted. I was looking forward to having a librarian use an RA tool like Novelist or at least Goodreads and not just a search engine that I could use on my own. In the end, I came away with T he Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov as an idea for the next book I'll read with twists and turns.