Thursday, January 26, 2017

week three prompt

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!

Next in the series: The lunatic café (January 1996)

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.

Saving the world (Apr 2006) by Julia Alvarez. Based on the appeal of the Kingsolver novel, I think that the reader might enjoy the reflective, romantic, suspenseful tone, the compelling and lyrical writing style, and the brisk pace of this novel.

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!

The translation of love (Apr 2016) by Lynne Kutsukake
The thousand autumns of Jacob De Zoet (Jun 2010) by David Mitchell

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?

A possibility of violence (Jul 2014) by Dror Mishani
The nature of the beast: a Chief Inspector Gamache novel (Aug 2015) by Louise Penny

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?
Day by day Armageddon (Sep 2009) by J. L. Bourne

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.

Wild girls (Oct 2016) by Erica Abeel
Judas (Nov 2016) by Amos Oz
The Wonder (Sep 2016) by Emma Donoghue
All the light we cannot see (May 2014) by Anthony Doerr

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

I had some difficulty searching within a genre and limiting the results to weed out foul language and sex scenes. Am I overlooking an important tool on NoveList or other RA resources?
I stuck to literary thrillers in the hope that the storylines and writing styles might not include a great deal of foul language or sex scenes.

The last days of night (Sep 2016) by Graham Moore
A guide for the perplexed (Sep 2013) by Dara Horn

Second, after you get a chance to do the readings and explore Mary Chelton's list of tools, I want to hear about how you find books to read. It could be a site or a resource you've just discovered or one you've used for years, one you use for yourself or for your patrons or family and friends.


It’s been just in the past few weeks that I’ve started to use readers’ advisory tools (like goodreads, Novelist, etc.) to find books that I might like to read. In the past, I’ve relied mostly on browsing sections of stacks and bookstores, Amazon.com recommendations, and book award lists. 

Tuesday, January 17, 2017

reading profile

It wasn't until partway through high school  -- when I started reading Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech during school lunch -- that I started to read on my own terms. I think a friend might have exclaimed that this was her absolute favorite book as a kid, and I wanted to know what the fuss was all about. Since then, I've often read books based on recommendations from others or by observing what others are reading. Often this is great; it pushes me in directions that I might not otherwise have gone and helps me to feel connected to friends and strangers through individual and shared experiences of the same text. Still, there are many genres that I haven't gotten into, and I'm really looking forward to exploring further in this course.

I tend to gravitate towards fiction that allows me to enter the interior worlds of others. Currently, I'm reading Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf; the wandering descriptions and stream of consciousness style are testing my patience, in a good way. I also enjoy graphic novels, plays, nonfiction, and memoirs. 

Some of the highlights from my last year of reading are: the Neapolitan series by Elena Ferrante, Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood, Kindred by Octavia Butler, Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin, The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination by Sarah Schulman, Lost in Translation by Eva Hoffman.