Week #8 and we're learning about Readers Advisory for Non-fiction. Of the many genres that non-fiction has to offer, I choose travel, memoir, crime, and essays as my four (4) to blog about.

Genre__________Dewey no                    Title___________Author________
Travel tales           910                        No Touch Monkey!          Halliday, Ayun
Essays                   varies                     Best American Science    Ariely, Dan
                                                               & Nature Writing
Memoir                 Biography              Kabul Beauty School       Rodriguez, Deborah
Crime                    364                         True Story                        Finkel, Michael





One title I selected is Michael Finkel's True Story:Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa.This narrative non-fiction title reads like a novel. It's a gripping story filled with lies and deceipt. It really is two stories - two parts of Michael's life that sort of collide. He, a respected NY Times magazine reporter, is in the process of losing his career and reputation when he finds he's a victim of identity theft. He's fired from his job and simultaneously is informed that another man, on the run and accused of murdering his whole family, has assumed his identity. What a great set up for a novel - or a made for TV movie - but it's true! I believe some of the appeal of this book, to a fiction reader, would be plot, characters, tone & pacing. Michael Finkel, an investigative journalist can tell a good story, set the scene, and create suspense.

True crime books like this appeal to the mystery, suspense, and thrillers audience.


The book I selected to represent the memoir/biography genre is Kabul Beauty School by Deborah Rodriguez. This memoir tells the tale of her time spent in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban. She went to offer humanitarian aid and wound up befriending many Afghans. Others in her group had background as doctors, nurses, etc. and she had been a hairdresser. It turned out that her profession & work experience was very useful, after all. She helped the women to set up some small businesses - against great opposition due to the cultural mores and the traditional closed life of women in that country. Her wonderful heartfelt stories of the women she met and the culture they lived in would be suitable for fiction readers who enjoy multi-cultural fiction. The characters are so well drawn that the reader feels as if they knew them.

Learned something new today! Publishers run sites & blogs for their teen audience. Makes sense, but I had never visited one. 'Teens at Random' and 'Harper Teen' are two that I stopped by. What did I find? This summer will be packed w/these genre/sub-genres - dystopias, post apocalyptic tales, paranormal romances (esp. ghosts), more vampires, coming of age, and teen love stories.

P.S. Don't forget the mermaids!

Week 7, Assignment 3

I looked at a couple of the recommended YA/Teen sites/blogs. Stacked (stackedbooks.org) is run by Kimberly Francisco, a public librarian in Texas, Kelly Jensen, small town librarian in Wisconsin, and Jen ?, another librarian. As to whether this site is successful, I don't know yet. Another site I visited is Teenreads.com. This site has over 25 reviewers from all walks of life, but all have an association with writing, reviewing, or publishing. Teenreads.com is part of The Book Report Network - which runs at least 8 other reader oriented sites. There is a whole corporate structure involved here - including founder/president Carol Fitzgerald, editorial director, content coordinator, senior writer, etc. etc., etc. Teenreads has a separate blog to read or follow. Both of these sites are aimed at the Teen/YA reader. Either could be useful to librarians, media specialists, or teachers to select titles for booktalking to their students.

So, I read a couple of articles about adult/teen crossover fiction. I think this phenomena gained ground around the the time of The Book Thief, and/or the Twilight series, and/or the Hunger Games series. The first article was from YALSA, The Hub, October 2012 entitled, "The Next Big Thing." I learned from this article - it listed 10 reasons why adults might be reading YA/Teen Fiction. If you'd asked me before, I might have been able to come up with 2-3 reasons. Here are some ways adults might 'accidentally' end up reading a YA title - (1) big name adult authors are writing Teen/YA fiction now, (James Patterson, Carl Hiaasen, John Grisham, & more), (2)YA offers a return to a simpler time - reader searching for nostalgia, or even escapism, & (3) the adult may have watched the movie or TV show & come to the library for the book and it was a YA title. I understand now why more adults are found in our Teen Fiction aisle these days.

Second article was from Publishers Weekly, issue of Dec. 14, 2012. It's entitled, "New Adult: Needless Marketing-Speak or Valued Sub-genre?" Some publishers, not booksellers so much, yet, are calling 'YA' fiction 'New Adult' fiction these days. hhhmmmmmmmm.....ok. The term may have been floating around in the publishing world since 2009. Of course, they are always trying to find a 'new niche' or a new 'target audience' to specially market towards. Adult/teen fiction crossover is a real phenomenon. It's to the publishers' benefit to encourage the continuation of mothers and daughters reading the same books together -  - this happened routinely w/the Twilight series and the Hunger Games series at my library. And bookstores were selling 2 copies of the books rather than just one - yay! I'm not convinced though that it is time yet to label another separate section of fiction at the library as "New Adult."

I commented about my finds and opinions on Rebecca B's blog and also Amie L.'s blog. I also put a brief comment on Monty P.'s.

Finishing up on subgenres. Mashups. The kinds of crazy mashups I have found between different subgenres, genres, other subgenres, etc. remind me of when my 2 friends and I used to take driving vacations to small towns in Texas(yes, I digress) We used to enjoy seeing & calling out what you could call the business 'mashups' They were really 2 businesses sharing a building to save $$$. But, we'd search for the "Bakery/Funeral Parlor" or the "Taxidermy/Bridal Gowns" stores. Yes, versions of this sort of thing do exist in many small towns in Texas.

Anyway, here's some mashups I have found - Chick-Lit/Fantasy/Vampires. Examples are: Almost to Die For: A Vampire Princess novel, by Tate Hallaway & Fangs for the Memories by Kathy Love. These were both shelved in our mainstream fiction section, not Romance or Fantasy. Another subgenre-genre mashup is Sci Fi/Adventure - Lost Lands. I found a couple of shipwreck stories like that - Life of Pi, by Yann Martel and Shipwreck Crusoe by Ken Milano. The first title is shelved in Fiction and, I believe, the 2nd one is in Science Fiction.