Big, Hairy Lab - Readers' Advisoring my Friends

Since I am not fortunate enough to work in a library…yet…I chose to work with my friends and family to see if I could Readers’ Advisor them. This may be the most fun I’ve had with an assignment ever. Not only did I manage to find a few things my friends liked, but my own to-read list doubled. I mainly asked everyone the same set of questions (tweaking where necessary), but I had good luck with getting great answers with them. Only one of these interviews took place in person; the rest occurred online. Below are the questions I asked of everyone, including examples and clarifications to make sure that I was being clear (since you can’t exactly talk it out when you’re discussing something via email). I also didn’t want to sound like I was making any assumptions or judgments, so I tried to include a wide range of topics in my examples, as well as a bit of humor.

What are the last few books/authors that you've read and *liked*? If none recently, do you have any all-time favorites?

What about those books most appealed to you (i.e. the relationships, level of detail, non-stop-action, humor, location/setting, the way the characters were written, etc etc etc...)?

Are there any types of books that you tend to read (i.e. mystery, romance, thriller, general fiction, sci-fi, memoires, non-fiction)? Are there any types you've been wanting to read, but don't know where to start?

Is there anything that you definitely *don't* like in books (i.e. bad language, sex, girly stuff, horror/gore, creepy clowns, etc.)?

Person 1

For my first attempt at Reader’s Advisory, I met a friend (we’ll call her Jo March, since she’s a writer) for lunch after church and we chatted about books. Since I’ve never done this deliberately (other than “this book is awesome and you should read it!”), I focused on what I knew (which is basically what I’ve read before). I asked Jo about books she really enjoyed lately and what it was about them that she really liked. She mentioned books by Karen Kingsbury and Francine Rivers, both Christian authors, and The Tea Rose, by Jennifer Donnelly. She enjoyed the relational aspect of many books, but did not limit herself to any particular style or genre. She wanted something to read to get her through the winter, possibly a series, maybe something historical.

I provided her with a list of titles that either had strong relationship aspects, were from a fun series, or both. To start I recommended Sarah Addison Allen for a good women’s relationships story – both Garden Spells and The Sugar Queen (she told me she wasn’t afraid of a little magic in her books). Jo mentioned that she’d tried the Harry Potter books at one point, but hadn’t managed to get through it – I provided the first book in the series because she was thinking about trying again. I also recommended a historical series from Angela Elwell Hunt, Heirs of Cahira O’Connor. She had mentioned a few Christian Fiction authors that she had enjoyed, and Hunt was a Christian author she hadn’t read.

So far Jo has read Garden Spells and she had this to say about it: "This was a very pleasant read for me! While I typically can read many genres, I particularly enjoy ones with dynamic and growing relationships. I love to see how people change with circumstances and how that affects their personal growth and how they relate with others in their life. I really enjoyed the mending of the broken relationship between Claire and Sydney. This type of storyline is always particularly satisfying to me. I also enjoyed how Claire not only held onto who she was at the core, but opened up to new things in her life as time went on. Her perspective broadened, and this made room for not only Sydney but also for love. The book was deep enough to keep me intrigued but easy enough to pick up several times a day at random moments. I finished it in three days and look forward to reading more from the author." (She’s a budding author, can you tell???) Harry Potter is still on her to-read list, but it was put on hold after rediscovering an old favorite which captured her attention. She’s currently reading the first in the Cahira series. But overall, she had a positive response to my book list.

Person 2

My next attempt was with a young man I’ll call Sgt. Pepper (because he’s a Marine and into rock star autobiographies). He had a very interesting range of book interests, from the afore mentioned rock star autobiographies, to The New Encyclopedia of Stage Hypnotism, to Siddhartha. Some of the things he said he enjoyed in a book were humor and a sense of the outrageous, but no romance novels, thankyouverymuch.

I found this to be a very interesting challenge. I’m more of a fiction reader, but Sgt. Pepper showed more of an interest in non-fiction, and the books he discussed sounded fascinating to me. But his interests also kept me from being able to utilize tools like Novelist or FictionConnection. Instead I used sites like GoodReads and Amazon to find titles for him. I looked for biographies and memoires that were related to Rock ‘n Rollers or first-hand tales of adventure and danger (based off of a book he enjoyed where a federal agent went undercover with the Hells Angels titled No Angel, by Jay Dobyns and Nils Johnson-Shelton). I also looked for books that had to do with the brain (because of Stage Hypnotism) and books of the strange or humorous.

I provided him with the following titles:

Non-Fiction

My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey, by Jill Bolte Taylor
Crazy for the Storm: A Memoire of Survival, by Normal Ollestad
Me, the Mob, and the Music: One Helluva Ride with Tommy James & The Shondells, by Tommy James
Scar Tissue, by Anthony Kiedis
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, Steven D Levitt
The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon, David Grann

Fiction

Shutter Island, Dennis Lehane
Drood, Dan Simmons
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, Seth Grahame-Smith

My attempt turned out to be successful: “All of these non-fiction books look fantastic. Drood, and the Lincoln book both look really interesting to me as well.” He said that he was going to look for these at his library, but at the time of writing this, I haven’t heard back from him to see if he had read anything he actually liked.

**Update - I heard back from the Sergeant and he had a chance to read two of the books I recommended, My Stroke of Insight and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. He enjoyed both, and even commented that after reading the Lincoln book, he may have to check out more fiction!

Person 3:

Next up was my undergrad journalism advisor – a newspaper man from the time when news still came on paper…which wasn’t that long ago. Let’s call him Jack “Cowboy” Kelly. Jack told me that he generally went for books on Nature, Christian Devotionals, Books about Books, Reference Books, Historicals, Legal Thrillers and Travel. He liked both Hemingway and Tolstoy. And he preferred books that were “insightful, well researched, and flowed well, and made me want to turn the page.” What he didn’t want from a book: Smut, Occult, and Nicholas Sparks.

Jack listed three books that he’d read and enjoyed: $20 per Gallon : How the Inevitable Rising Cost of Gas Will Change Our Lives for the Better, by Christopher Steiner; Scratch Beginnings : Me, $25, and the Search for the American Dream, by Adam Shepard; and The Man Who Loved Books Too Much : The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession, by Allison Hoover Bartlett.

Based on this information, I looked mainly for non-fiction titles regarding books and literature, informational and researched topics, and Christian devotionals, plus one fiction book that fit the “books about books” style. I recommended the following:

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, by Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner (I just saw the author on Bonnie Hunt, so it was fresh in my mind.)
The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary, by Simon Winchester
The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way, by Bill Bryson
The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon, by David Grann (Another TV spot recommendation.)
The Library at Night, by Alberto Manguel
Latitude Zero: Tales of the Equator, by Gianni Guadalupi
Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality, by Donald Miller
Jesus for President: Politics for Ordinary Radicals, by Shane Claiborne
The Eyre Affair (Thursday Next #1), by Jasper Fforde

The results: I missed the mark on the Christian books and the Lost City, and no comment on the Fforde novel, but the rest were fairly well on the mark. The first two were already on Jack's to-read list and he’s enjoyed other titles by Bill Bryson. He thought The Library at Night sounded “fascinating” and while Latitude Zero “would not be my first choice,” he said it did sound interesting. His final thoughts: “You did fantastic! I think the list is very insightful with just the little bit of information I gave you,” particularly since “we've not had a face-to-face discussion for years.” Again, at the time of writing this, I haven’t heard back on whether or not he’s had a chance to pick up any of these books, but at least he was positive about future options.

**Update: Jack hasn't had a chance to test out any of these books because he was reading religious books during the Lenten season, but apparently he was satisfied with my attempt, because he asked me for more recommendations. This time he was looking specifically for books about sustainable living and urban homesteading. One of the titles I recommended, Fresh Food from Small Spaces, turned out to be a winner.

Person 4

My next attempt was with a friend from high school, whom we’ll call Buttercup (because we once swapped Halloween costumes, her mother's vintage dress for my Egyptian queen ensemble, and I spent the night calling myself Buttercup - now she's get's that title, one because of the dress, and two because she could totally pull off the Princess title, she's that awesome). I had a hard time with this one – maybe it was because I thought I knew her tastes, but found out they weren’t what I remembered from ten years ago, or maybe it was because she has a wide range of tastes, but some limiting likes and dislikes that made it tougher.

Buttercup liked Twilight, but didn’t like Romance. She preferred books from a female perspective, but didn’t like Chick Lit. Mysteries, page-turners, crazy twists, and action made her Likes list, and too much sex and stories that build up to nothing made her Dislikes list.

Books she’s read recently and liked included Twilight, Shutter Island, and Water for Elephants. She also likes Michael Crichton and Stephen King, though she hated The Stand, and she also thought The Piano Teacher was incredibly boring.

To be honest, by the time I got to Buttercup, I’d spent all day looking up books for my other volunteers, and it was rather late in the evening. I was tired, over-booked (as it were), and stumped. I couldn’t find any Read Alikes from the regular sources, so I was back to digging through GoodReads and Amazon for my titles. I looked for things that would be more exciting, or maybe include some type of hunt, since she liked twists. I came up with the following list (which is pretty pathetic, when compared to my other tries):

Labyrinth - Mosse, Kate
One for the Money - Janet Evanovich
The Thirteenth Tale - Diane Setterfield
Fingersmith - Sarah Waters

All of these books were written from the female perspective, but other than the Evanovich title, none of the others were Chick Lit or Romance and I didn’t expect there to be too much sex in them. They also appeared to have adventurous plots, which I hoped would make good page-turners. I recommended Evanovich based on the class discussions about how funny they were and that they were fast reads. Oddly enough, one of these titles was a winner for Buttercup! She read The Thirteenth Tale and enjoyed it, particularly the ending because, “the author explains that she hates to be left hanging at the end of a book, like ‘what happened to him or her?’ so she basically said what happened to everyone BUT herself.” Buttercup also said that the other books looked interesting – I’m glad that even my poor attempt had some success. Either that or she was just being nice.

**Update:  Since writing this post, Buttercup has picked up and read Finger Lickin' Fifteen. She didn't mean to read this Evanovick series out of order, but noticed some of her books at the library and remembered that I had mentioned them. Buttercup picked up this one and thought it was very funny and appreciated that it was a quick read. Another winner!

Person 5 (this may take a while)

I can say this, because he’s such a good friend, but my final person was a giant pain in the butt. I don’t know whether to call him Bruce Wayne due to his interests, or Dennis the Menace due to the trouble he caused me in this assignment. Maybe I’ll split the difference and call him Dennis Wayne (or DW for short). When I was in the midst of working with him on this project, I thought I was failing repeatedly in finding something to interest him. But after looking through my notes again, I realize that based on his comments I actually did a bang-on job of finding titles for him, he just wasn’t in the mood for any of them at the time.

DW is a reader of Fantasy, Comics/Graphic Novels, Historical Fiction, Mysteries, Suspense, Sci-Fi, and Christian works. Authors he’s read and liked include C.S. Lewis, JRR Tolkien, J.K. Rowlings, Alexander Dumas, Christopher Paolini, Tim O’Brien, and Donald Miller. He says, “I’m a big story person”; he wants a story that is engaging and has well developed characters. Humor and action are also preferable. In his “No” column was Twilight and he told me he preferred his fantasy stories to have dragons, orcs, and elves rather than vampires or werewolves.

In my first attempt, I recommended the following using FictionConnecton and GoodReads:

Dragons of the Dwarven Depths, Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman (first of three)
Dragon Champion, E. E. Knight (looks like this is the first of 5)

Fantasy, but more magic-on-earth style...
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke
The Book of Lost Things, John Connolly

Historical:
The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho

Christian Sci-Fi/Fantasy:
C.S. Lewis' Space Trilogy books - the first is Out of the Silent Planet.
Ted Dekker is another Christian author who does some sci-fi/fantasy.

He talked about some of these books, said they sounded interesting, but wasn’t too clear on many of them regarding why they weren’t right. For one, The Book of Lost Things, he said, “The book by Connolly sounds good but not really that interesting.” For the C.S. Lewis books, he said, “I have heard about it and it sounds rather interesting, but have not read it.” Well, that’s sort of the point, DW! This is where the initial hair-pulling began.

So I tried again. I asked him about other books he’s liked, and he listed The Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander, Last Sons by Alan Grant, Helltown by Dennis O’Neil, Inheritance by Devin Grayson, and The Three Muskateers by Alexander Dumas.

This time I tried to hit the Comics/Graphic Novels and recommended Neil Gaiman, particularly his graphic novel series The Sandman, of which Preludes and Nocturnes was first. I sent him some links to a few Graphic Novel and Comics book lists and I also found a short story compilation called Superheroes (which included a story by an author he mentioned, Dennis O’Neil) as something that could lead him to new authors. (Did I mention that he likes the Superhero-style comics?)

I then mentioned Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World and Gaston Leroux’s The Phantom of the Opera as possible read alikes to Dumas, with the added benefit of sci-fi/fantasy elements, and The Princess Bride because the movie is awesome and the book is supposed to be funny and adventurey.

Again, my suggestions weren’t quite right, even though he’s read and liked some of them (which means I was on target, dangit!), said that some others “sound really interesting!” while others were even books that he’d “definitely want to read.” He’d also read most of the titles from the booklists I’d sent him. After saying how all of my suggestions sounded interesting, he then added, “I know this might be frustrating, but I have a weird taste in books.” This told me that while I chose well, he wasn’t going to read any of them. At least not right now. (I have now pulled out half of my hair.)

So I asked him what he was in the mood for. I didn’t get a response back from that question before I sent him a quick follow-up email with another book I'd just discovered for him. This one was The Secret Life of Houdini: The Making of America’s First Superhero, by William Kalush and Larry Sloman. He did get excited about this one, and said he’d go look for it. SUCCESS!

After following up with DW, though, I found out that he actually went for the C.S. Lewis book, Out of the Silent Planet, that he was about 2/3rds of the way through it, and was enjoying it. This book was in my first attempt at a recommendation for him. That sound you hear? That’s my head banging against the wall. But he found a new book, and I’m happy that he’s happy. I am. Really.

To conclude:

I think I had a pretty wide-ranging Readers Advisory experience with this assignment. I had people who were super easy, super difficult (coughDWcough), people I didn’t hear back from, people who didn’t follow up, people who gave me a lot to work with, and others who gave me limited information. I actually worked with more than five people for this project, in case I didn’t hear back from some of them (I wrote about the ones that had the most information). Though he was a pain in my butt, I think I learned the most from my experience with DW. I had to really work for that one, and in the end, I think he has a lot of titles to turn to in the future, and I have a few titles in my pocket for the future. I also discovered that I did a better job at finding and recommending non-fiction books, which I don’t read (I’m more of a fiction reader). But overall, I thought this project was really fun and I hope to be an awesome Readers’ Advisor in the future.

Annotation 6 - The Historian

Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian is a story within a story within a story. Sort of. The unnamed narrator, who we are to assume is actually the author per the author's note at the beginning of the book, tells the story of her teenage years in the 1970s after she discovers a mysterious book and set of letters in her father's office. Over a series of trips throughout Europe, her father tells the story of his mentor's search for Dracula around the 1930s, his own in the 1950s, and Dracula's past in the 1400s. They believe that Dracula is still alive, or rather, undead. The book the narrator discovered is centuries old and full of blank pages, except for the center, where there's a woodcut image of a dragon and Dracula's name. Receiving this book leaves the historian (the narrator, her father, his mentor) who received it under the power of overwhelming curiousity and a drive to solve a historical mystery.

There is so much I want to say about this book, but I can't without revealing things that took me soooo long to discover. But I can say that this book is a beast. Not in a bad way, but do not attempt to read this book under any kind of timeline. I can put away one of the longer Harry Potter books in a weekend, but though this book is of a similar page count, it is far more dense. I spent about two weeks reading this (not full time, obviously) and hadn't even made it to the half-way point. I thought about trading this book in for something faster, at least for this assignment, but I was determined to prevail! And it was worth it, in my humble opinion. I really enjoyed this book. It's not really a horror novel, though this Dracula fits that mold better than a sparkly or bar-owning vampire, but it does have an eerie vibe. I think the style may fit a bit more with what Carrie described for her review Bram Stoker's Dracula; it's not racy or terribly graffic, it has a more mysterious or investigative feel, with the addition of a more historical bent.

I think this would be a great entry into the historical genre for non-fiction history buffs or someone who wants to test the waters of the horror genre, without all the gore. The Historian feels a bit more like a psychological thriller, in that there's not a lot of the scary stuff, but the way Kostova writes seemingly mild scenes still impart a sense of general spookiness. It also occurred to me, and this may sound strange, but I think this would be an excellent read while someone is stuck somewhere convalescing or on bedrest, or perhaps on a long European tour (for someone who can't afford a Kindle or pack too many books). But this is definitely not a beach read!

A final thought - one thing I discovered after reading this (through wikipedia, so take from it what you will) was that Kostova's mother was a librarian; suddenly underlying themes started to make a lot more sense.

More links...

Young Learners Need Librarians, Not Just Google (a Forbes article)

Shhh! That's the Sound of Public Libraries Closing (aolnews article)

The 11 Most Surprising Banned Books (a Huffington Post article)

Library Programming: An Irish Jig

When I started my search for a library program for this class, I asked a fellow student and friend what programs her library had coming up. This friend works at a library on the south side (Greenwood, I believe), and had mentioned a few cool things they'd done for their teen group (if I remember correctly, they had a lock-in a few months ago with somewhere between 30 and 50 teens!) and I figured they'd have some cool adult activities there, too. The first thing she told me about was a Salsa lesson and wine tasting event (Dancing! Booze!), but it was being held right about the time I asked the question, so I couldn't get there in time. The next event they had was an Alice in Wonderland themed tea-tasting (Tea! Johnny Depp!), but alas, it occurred on a Thursday night that we had class.

After failing with that library, I went back to IMCPL's calendar, determined to find something. I eventually decided on seeing an Irish-playing music group in honor of St. Patty's Day (Ireland! Music!). This appealed to my Irish roots and love of music. So on the Sunday before St. Patrick's Day, I made the trek to the Wayne Township branch of IMPCL to see the musical stylings of Alair, a female trio of harp, flute(s), and cello/violin.

The music was lovely and I liked that the library offered this program to its patrons. A few interesting things about what I saw there:

~The event was easy to find, as it was in a room right off the entry way. I've never visited the Wayne branch, and I appreciated the fact that I had no problem finding where I needed to go.
~There were no librarians or staff present for the program. I initially thought the man running the front table and directing traffic was the librarian in charge of this event, but he turned out to be the harpist's husband.
~I would estimate the average age of the audience to be about 70. I was easily the youngest person in the room, besides the musicians' kids. There were about 15-20 people who attended, some couples, some groups, but the majority were older and women.
~The door was left open during the concert. This was nice because some people heard the music and came in for a while, but I could also see this as a possible distraction to the patrons, as the stacks were right outside the room and the musicians weren't exactly playing quietly. I, for one, would dig searching the stacks whilst jigs and reels played in the background, but that's just me.

All-in-all, I thought this was a fun event and I thought it was cool that an older generation was taking advantage in the library's event. It was free and the music was beautiful and the audience really enjoyed it. It's too bad, though, that so few younger people were in attendence; I don't know if this is the standard audience for this library's events, but if it is, I wonder how they could reach out to other age groups.

Links 'o fun!

Here are a few links to book-related Top 10 lists. Just for fun :)

10 of the best: Heroes from Children's Fiction

Kevin Jackson's Top 10 Vampire Novels (because we can't seem to lay off the vampire stories)

Francesca Simon's Top 10 Antiheroes

Will Davis' Top 10 Literary Teenagers

Secret Shopper - Readers Advisory

I went to a library on the west side of town today, one I've never visited before. I found a sign for "Adult Reference" and made my way over. Two gentleman sat at side-by-side desks and I moseyed over and landed right between the two. Gentleman #1 looked up first (I didn't have to wait long) and asked me if he could help me.

Well, I wanted to mix things up a bit. Instead of asking for a recommendation for a "good" book, I asked for a "fun" one (heh). And the look on his face - it was pure "oh, crap" for a good five seconds. He shook himself out of it, and asked with good-natured sarcasm if my idea of a fun read was Abyssinian archaeology (which was clearly his idea of a good read). Then he asked me what my idea of "fun" was. I mentioned a TV show I've been watching called Leverage, which he actually heard of (so I didn't have to explain that it's a show about theives who start playing Robin Hood). I also mentioned Ocean's 11, heists, and funny as examples of what I'm looking for.

Ok, let me start by saying that I didn't hate this experience, the librarian was very nice and that counts for a lot in my book, and he did provide me with information. Unfortunately, he wasn't really on the mark with his response. I was hoping for a fun caper-style book, something where the crooks are the good guys and the "victims" are the real crooks, and they do all kinds of clever and twisty things that you don't understand until they reveal it at the end (see, I had a plan - I was all ready to be very specific if I was given the chance). Alas, I didn't get a chance to say any of that before he was "helping me." I think he figured that the closest he could come to a fun heist book was with a cozy mystery. He told me that he'd created a book list for cozy mysteries - or mystery-lite - and mentioned that these were often humorous and had less sex and violence than the regular mysteries. He went off to print off the sheet (titled "Cozy/Amateur Mystery Authors"). He mentioned two of the authors, and that one (or both) had stories where cats solved the crime. (I have no idea how he went from George Clooney to cats, but whatever.)

He took me over to the mystery section and pointed out a few titles that matched authors from his list and then he left me to it. All told, I think this lasted only five minutes. Then, because I wasn't sure if he'd come back and check on me (I didn't want to just leave after that, I was supposed to be looking for a book), I spent at least 10 minutes searching for something to take home. But when you're given a list of authors and then go searching the stacks, it's not exactly easy to find things. Most of these authors write in series, and it seems that few of these smaller branch libraries have all of the books in each series. I got close a few times to picking something, only to find out it was book eight. So I did leave with two books: Big Foot Stole My Wife and Other Stories by Joan Hess and The Xibalba Murders by Lyn Hamilton. Both authors were on his list, but neither were heisty.

Final Grade: B- (mostly for attitude)

Something fun for my fellow library lovers...

Check out this Mental Floss article about funky special collections at US academic libraries!

Fantasy: Alphabet of Thorn

Some time ago, I was browsing through Half Priced Books and found a book with a truly lovely cover. I thought I may have read something from the author before (the artwork style seemed familiar, but I wasn't sure if the illustrator was connected to the author), but I figured something that pretty was worth the dollar this clearance book cost even if the book sucked. (Pretty, isn't it?)

The book is Alphabet of Thorn written by Patricia A. McKillip. According to the cover, she's a 'World Fantasy Award-Winning Author,' so I figured this would be a good book to dust off and use for my assignment. Plus, I would achieve the satisfaction of having one less unread book on my bookshelf, not that there are many, but they mock me.

This story takes place in a fantasy world (rather than an earth-bound fantasy) called Raine, and follows several characters. First is a young woman who was abandoned as a baby and left on the edge of the cliff. Nepenthe (don't ask me how to pronounce that) was raised in the palace that was built into the cliff where she was found, and was raised by librarians in a library (fun!) deep beneath the palace. She's a translator who has come across a mysterious text that was written in a language of thorns and has some mysterious hold over her. A young girl, about 14 or 15 I think, has just been made queen over Raine. No one thinks she can handle the job, particularly the old king's advisor, the mage Vevay. Finally, there is a young man named Bourne (and every time he was in a scene, I recalled the yumminess of Matt Damon in the movies of the same name) who is a student at the mage school who is discovering new abilities as well as an affection for Nepenthe. The Kingdom of Raine is suddenly at risk, and these characters have to figure out where the danger is coming from and what they can do to stop it.

Intermixed with all of these characters' points-of-view is a back story of a conqueror and a mage that lived 3000 years before and their story. McKillip did a good job of going from one story to the next, but there were a few times where I had information overload, particularly because she holds out till the end of the book to tie everything together. Fortunately, the ending was satisfying and all the loose ends were tied up the way I like them (I loathe open-ended stories).

When I started reading this book, I wasn't sure I was going to like it - it felt like McKillip was trying to write in an old folktale style and I thought that maybe she was trying a bit too hard. I only felt that way for a chapter or two, though. I don't know if that's because she found her flow or if I just got used to it, but I had no problem with her writing style the rest of the story. She also changed the points-of-view with the start of a new chapter (not every time, but she rarely, if ever, switched them within the chapter); I enjoyed this and it fit with the unhurried flow of the story. I could easily get through a chapter and put the book down to pick up again later. I didn't realize this at the time, but I think I was in the mood for an unstressed read (not that there wasn't mystery or suspense, but something about certain types of fantasies gives the timing a magical quality and the anxiety of the stressful moments gets lost in the flow of the story). McKillip created a believable fantasy world that you could dive into and wade out of without difficulty.

This story definitely fit the fantasy vibe, and if you're looking for a story with the flow and style of an old fairy or folk tale, McKillip may be right up your alley. I would even say that this story lived up to its cover.

A Brave New World - My Venture into Sci Fi

I thought I was a Sci-Fi reader. I really did. I liked books that took place in other worlds. I've enjoyed series where the characters could do fancy things with their brains. I love me some Stargate and Firefly and Richard Dean Anderson. I'd 'squee!' if Adam Baldwin ever called me.

But as I started to look into books for my Sci-Fi assignment, I learned something very important: I don't know squat about sci-fi books. Thought I did. But I don't. I actually know (some) Fantasy and some quasi-paranormal stuff. I browsed the library stacks hoping for inspiration and found a lot of Fantasy (not helpful) and a lot of series sci-fi (and I had no idea where any one book fit into the series).

I put a shout out on my blog asking for help and my lovely classmates (I'm talking about you, Ben and Carri!) gave me several suggestions. I also went on Novelist and looked at their reading suggestion lists. I then went to the IMCPL website and put a ton of books into my queue. I requested something from all three of these sources - books I thought would be attainable to my poor, un-sci-ified head.

I brought my haul home and surrounded myself with a dozen books that take place on various and sundry planets. I read the inside flap of each of them and eliminated about half. I then read the first few pages of each and landed on three. One was written by an author I've read before, but since I wanted to branch out a bit more, I put that at the bottom of the list. The next started out with the F-bomb. Man had his house stolen, so it was understandable, but it felt like we were starting off on the wrong foot that way. So I selected book number three: The Better Mousetrap by Tom Holt.

As I started to get into the book, I had an "Oh no, there are dragons in this book - did I accidentally pick a Fantasy after all?" moment, but they had fancy technology mixed in with the magic, so I figured I was ok.

The book takes place in present-day England (and occasionally New Zealand, and once in Renaissance Italy at what we assume is Da Vinci's back yard). Frank has a Portable Door that allows him to travel through space and time (like our favorite Hero, Hiro Nakamura). Emily is in Pest Control, except the pests she "controls" include said dragons, ginormous spiders (gak), and other monster-type creatures. She also dies a lot, so it's a good thing that Frank has that door. He has to go back in time to save her at least half a dozen times, because the Better Mousetrap of the title is actually a magical device that makes sure that someone dies, but in all realities or dimensions or...something like that, and one has Emily's name on it (thus the multiple deaths).

I did enjoy this book, for the most part. My biggest complaint is that it had way too many twists and turns, especially the closer you get to the end. You think you're following along, then suddenly you're lost again. It all ends up making sense, but I think I prefer to get a bit more settled in to the last twist before I have to deal with a new one. The book started out a bit confusing, too, but I blame that on a literary device: introduce your characters in weird situations apart so that you know that later there will be more weird situations, probably with those characters experiencing them together. The style was quirky and I enjoyed the British humor. But what was really interesting was how Holt interspersed the corporate culture into the story. Almost made it creepier...

This is definitely not your typical sci-fi, but I would recommend it to anyone who enjoyed Jasper Fforde or British comedy. It's clever, witty, and fun while mixing up the familiar with the unfamiliar.

Quot libros, quom breve tempus.

I'm working on my Reader's Advisory project (recommending books to friends) and my already substantial to-read list just doubled in the last three days.