Passively Recommending Books

  Bookriot has a great article up about Building Good Banned Book Displays . While I encourage all of you to read the entire thing and to take their advice into consideration as you build your displays, there are two points that I want to highlight. The first is to focus on contemporary titles that have been challenged. As Bookriot’s Nikki DeMarco notes “Be sure to include recent titles in your display of banned and challenged books. When people recognize a title or have a personal connection to it, then learn that it was banned, the impact on that person is even greater.”   While titles like Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Catcher in the Rye have a history of challenges, we don’t want anyone to think that current books that they have enjoyed are not the focus of bans. Making them aware that books like A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas and Drama by Raina Telgemeier will highlight that bans have an ongoing impact. The ALA’s Office of Intellectual Freedom has an archive of the top

As I have mentioned before, there is no reason to reinvent the wheel when it comes to book displays or finding ideas. Both Booklist and Library Journal regularly have ideas you can borrow and reshape to fit your own library's needs. While it may not be up to you if your library subscribes or not to either or both, even the headline of an article can help you with book display ideas.  Library Journal has a feature called Display Shelf on their website. Often curated by Editor Melissa DeWild, these shelves are a great way to get ideas about what kind of fiction and non-fiction displays your library can put up. Don't feel pressure to include every book they have up; use the idea as a jumping off point and search your own collection for titles that will work.  Booklist has articles on Essential reads in a particular subgenre or subject. There are also trend alerts which include books with subjects like Love & Sports . Even if you don't subscribe, you can be inspired by

 Setting aside any libraryland debates about genre spine labels, genre filing on the shelf versus interfiling and so forth, I thought I would talk about how to use books which cross several genres or are genre blended as a theme for an online list or book display. Many books have crossover appeal. You can use this to gently suggest to your readers that there are books outside their usual lanes that they will enjoy and perhaps create another entire world of books for that patron to explore.  The easiest option is to do a "If you liked this... Try this" book display/list. You can go outside of the usual similar titles in the same genre and instead match up a memoir or biography with a fiction title. Pick someone who lived in the same era or a biography with a fictional depiction of that person. A recent idea from the news and popular culture would be a novel about the British royal family with a biography of a British royal. Pair a book like Children of Chicago  by Cynthia Pela

When Things Go Wrong book display with titles about disasters including some local/state titles. I borrowed this idea from ALA's Booklist. They have lists that are great jumping off points. This display could include fiction from any and all genres including horror, suspense, and thrillers.