Passively Recommending Books

  I will recap PLA 2024 at the end but there has been a lot of good talk about upcoming horror novels at the convention. I wanted to remind everyone that Summer Scares, a partnership between the Horror Writers of America, BookList and NoveList, is a great opportunity to promote horror outside of October.  I can guarantee that your patrons don't only think that beach reads are cheery and light. Living near the beach, I see people check out plenty of thrillers, suspense, and horror novels to take with them. Don't prejudge what your patrons are interested in and seasonally limit what portions of your collection that you market to them. There are adult, YA, and middle grade titles selected each year. They are always back list titles that are in print. An author is selected as spokesperson and this year it is Clay McLeod Chapman who is an excellent author to suggest to patrons who think they don't read horror. You can find out more about his books here .  There are free webinars

Day one of PLA 2024 included the panel Anti-Racist Readers Services: Beyond the Basics, sponsored by NoveList, and presented by Becky Spratford (RA for All), Robin Bradford, and Yaika Sabat. Becky has kindly posted the the slides on her blog . Becky and Robin have a course with NoveList called Actively Anti-Racist Readers Services to Readers  if you would like to learn more.  A question was asked about diversity in regards to human bodies, specifically looking for books with characters who are plus size or curvy. There are readers and librarians who have curated lists that you can draw from to create lists for patron and staff use. Even publishers have created lists . The titles can be highlighted on your social media as well to draw attention to the fact that your collection includes titles like this and even that they exist at all. Include them in your book displays and lists.  Take clues from the titles of the lists you do find and improve your search. As you will see, the titles of

  I review horror for Library Journal upon occasion and I am going to start posting my draft reviews here. Horror Movie by Paul Tremblay will be published in June 2024 and it's a stellar book. You can read my starred review here .  Because the book is about an indie horror film from 1993, a display of 1990's horror films would be a great way to use the book for a display or list. You can dig through your backlist to find authors and horror titles from the 90's as well.  Your non-fiction collection may also include books about film making, the history of films, horror movies, and biographies of actors and directors. It's a great book to use as inspiration for programming about indie filmmaking. Look for read alikes to add to a display such as The Remaking by Clay McLeod Chapman,  How To Make a Horror Movie and Survive by Craig DiLouie, and We Sold Our Souls by Grady Hendrix. I would also add book about slashers like Final Girl Support Club also by Grady Hendrix and Final

  Crime fiction includes mysteries, thrillers, suspense, and spy novels. All of these have many subgenres and can easily be their own list or display. Remember that readers who enjoy one often will cross over to read another. If you check out the bibliographic record of some crime fiction titles, you will often see mystery, thriller, and suspense listed as genres.  Again, as with the previous posts, I am going to try to not repeat resources. Keep in mind, many of these resources have information about multiple genres. If you have suggestions, let me know! Crime Reads is run by Literary Hub and focuses on crime fiction and non-fiction. There are a lot of lists, read likes, interviews, and news about upcoming releases. Beyond fiction, they cover TV, movies, and true crime.  One annoying thing is that those who eschew other genres will promote crime fiction, even those who believe themselves to read only "serious" literature. Setting aside the snobbery and incorrect attitude ab

  Romance is in the air - and on the blog! As before, I am going to try to not repeat any of resources I listed before. Note that you can use many of them for a variety of genres.  There are so many romance book blogs! I will list a few here but if you are a fan or have a huge patron base for them, you might want to spend time searching for them.  Harlequin is one of the publishers even those who are unfamiliar with romance know. One of the most useful things on their site is what they call " favorite romance storylines " or what other people call tropes. They also talk about " miniseries " on their site which allow " readers to return to the same town, family or cast of characters to fall in love again and again!" There are non-Harlequin authors who do this. It would be a fun way to market your series fiction - call them a miniseries.  Smart Bitches, Trashy Books has been around for a long time. It includes a blog, book reviews, book suggestions, and a p

  We all have to provide readers advisory for genres we don't read. I have not yet found the high fantasy series that really draws me in. Everyone has those books they can't get into. There is nothing wrong with that - just don't make a big show of how much you don't like reading it.  Here are some sources for news and ideas about fantasy. Science fiction and fantasy are often grouped together so check the post about science fiction for more ideas. The posts about other genres may also have resources you can use for fantasy, you check them out.  For a primer on fantasy subgenres, try this article on The Portalist. Other sites like Book Riot also have them. Searching for any of the subgenres will pull up a lot of ideas you can use.  Goodreads has a page devoted to various genres. They include the most popular books from that genre as well as links to subgenres and related genres. Their fantasy page has new releases, videos, lists, giveaways, and tags that are relate