Readers’ Advisory Service in the Public Library by Joyce G. Saricks
My rating: 5/5 cats
gather round chilluns—it is that time of year, where i get to review textbooks!! i will only do one today, because i do not want to overstimulate your excitement-panels, but seriously—this book is so much fun, i can hardly stand it!! it’s probably not much fun if you don’t love books, but for me, it is a total curl-up-on-the-body-pillow funtime read. it should be required reading for anyone who wants to talk about books on this website or amongst friends or to strangers on the subway—or wherever you do your best book-talking.
it has everything: the r/a interview, articulating appeal factors, promoting the collection, highlighting unknown titles, book talks and book lists, topics like “differentiating between hard and soft-edged suspense;” all the shit i nerdily love!
readers’ advisory is by far the most fun thing in all of library school; it is like being a book detective or a book matchmaker—setting people up on blind dates with books and hoping they find a life together (well, in a library setting, i suppose i would hope they find a two-week period of happiness together and then—a painful severance). and it is the hardest class to get into because the demand is so great, and it is not offered every semester, and it ends up being like a book club, but with papers, and rarely any wine. and although i complained about a lot of the books i had to read for the class, i still feel like i learned a lot about genre fiction (which is the other textbook—stay tuned!)
but so my professor, the reigning queen of all readers’ advisory says this book is flawed because it does not go into enough about indirect readers’ advisory through merchandising and effective displays, but shhhh!! that is my ace in the hole, the gladiola in my back pocket—displays are the only thing in this world i am truly good at, and someday when i myself am the queen of all readers’ advisory, it will be because of this advantage i have from my years of retail servitude. and the book does go into that enough, i think. shit like that is more intuitive—you either know what you are doing, or you don’t. but i know how to move books. i can make really good displays to attract the peepul with colors and covers and proximity and subliminal connections (and as ariel would tell me—bears)
and i don’t want joyce g. saricks giving away the secrets.
yet.
when my unauthorized biography comes out, then you will all know the secrets.
until then—this book should suffice.
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