The Readers’ Advisory Guide To Genre Fiction by Joyce G. Saricks
My rating: 5/5 cats
last textbook review for now, but seriously—i love love love my readers’ advisory textbooks!!
this one is focusing on genre fiction, rather than the process of readers’ advisory, so for all you bookloving people who are not or are not planning to become librarians, this one might be even more fun for you than the other joyce saricks book i am in love with.
this one basically just identifies the different genres that exist, and then gives nice short essays about “why people like these books,” or “appeal factors,” if you are a librarian. so even if you; the librarian, the bookseller, the curious reader, do not personally like a particular genre, this book tells you why other people are drawn to them so you can identify other books with the same qualities, even in other genres which results in crossover appeal which will open even more doors to the book-seeker and if that doesn’t make you hard, you are no booknerd, my friend.
in class, dr chelton was always talking about libraries that had special “readers’ advisory corners” where the staff would collect all the books like this and things like genreflecting and detecting women and other awesome r/a tools, and people could just go and dork out at their leisure and learn about tons of new authors without having to ask for help. this sounds like a dream to me. in my head, i picture it like a windowseat with peach seat cushions and little like curtainy things that give the impression of seclusion. also, there would be lemonade. (when i was about 13, we moved into a house that we had built for us, and i was promised a windowseat, but either the builders forgot to build it or my parents forgot their promise to me. i was also promised a unicorn mural on the wall, but that may have been my brother’s fault for not actually doing it. i am still bitter about the windowseat. even though my dad put this wooden chest thing in front of the window that had a padded cushion on it—it was not the same as a windowseat) but so that’s what i imagine in these mythical libraries that are apparently all over long island. i also picture this song playing while i curl up with these textbooks in my imaginary windowseat.
library school is awesome.
read my book reviews on goodreads
