Passively Recommending Books

  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

This is the first of some genre-focused posts. Rather than start with genres I know more about (romance and horror) I thought I would do the harder ones first so we are jumping off with science fiction. There is science fiction content on my post about general book content so check those sites as well if you are looking for science fiction book news.  Whether right or wrong, the worlds of science fiction and gaming seem to have an affiliation so I've included some gaming sites with book related content.  Also, if you have suggestions here, please let me know! The Portalist : A site run by Open Road Media (which operates other genre-focused sites like The Lineup ) focused on science fiction and fantasy. The focus is on backlist titles. There are a lot of articles with read-alikes and lists based upon a theme such as " Must Read Space Opera Books ." They also cover movies and TV shows along with weird news that will appeal to fans of the genre.  Book Riot has science fictio

White Horse is one of NoveList’s Best of the Year titles for 2022 . If you are following or promoting the NoveList 2023 Reading Challenge , it fills the January prompt.  Kari James is an urban Indian, working in bars, reading Stephen King, and listening to heavy metal. She spends her free time with her cousin, Debby, and at the White Horse, an Indian bar. Abandoned by her mother while an infant, Keri is forced to look into her past as well as her family’s past when Debby gives her a bracelet that was her mother’s. The bracelet seems to bring forth visions. It’s a horror novel with heart that dives into the pain and horror in digging up the truth. It is another title that is a compelling story of women’s friendships and relationships as are The Bandit Queen and Bad Cree. A display filled with books that center the relationships between groups of women would be a great display to use for March and Women’s History Month. The books don’t need to have one tone as families and friendships

 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