Adult Reader's Advisory

  I found myself torn on this subject. On the one hand, I completely understand the need to create separate sections. It’s the same reason Westerns are in a specific place, or romance, or horror. If you are specifically looking for urban/street lit or LGBTQ+ books, it would be extremely helpful, for navigation purposes, for a separate section to exist. However, I am going to go with not separate. An article from the School Library Journal discusses a survey about this exact topic, with public and school librarians across the country participating. An overwhelming majority, 92%, do no have separate sections. While this survey is aimed more at the young adult and children’s areas, the arguments made are valid and my main reason for keeping the books together is the idea of the “otherness” that can be instilled in someone who visits the separate section. “Concerns about students not wanting to be seen going to the special section, being judged, or revealing something about themselve...

  How to Make Friends with the Dark By Kathleen Glasgow Published April 9, 2019 432 pages Summary: Tiger and her mother live an odd life. Tiger wears hand-me-downs and thrift store finds and her eclectic mother is always trying to make their on-the-edge-of-poverty life seem like an adventure. Tiger mostly doesn’t mind; after all, it has always been her and mom against the world. After a huge fight causes a rift in the relationship, Tiger storms off, content to spend the evening falling for a boy and feeling the ecstasy of a perfect first kiss. And then a phone call comes, bringing the darkness and changing Tiger’s life forever. A brain aneurysm. Here one second, gone the next. And now Tiger is alone in the darkness. After her mother dies, she is shuffled around between foster homes, some significantly worse than others, and Tiger fades further into the darkness, letting it surround her, consume her. Her grief becomes a tangible thing, pushing her down, smothering her...

  I’ll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer By Michelle McNamara, Introduction by Gillian Flynn, Afterword by Patton Oswalt Published February 27, 2018 (posthumously) 352 pages Geographic Setting-Oak Park, IL, Hollywood, CA, Sacramento, CA, Irvine, CA, various California towns Time Period-1976-2016 Subject Headings-Home invasions, cold cases, serial rapists, serial murders, criminal investigation, Michelle McNamara Type-Autobiography, biography, true crime Summary: The Golden State Killer terrorized California for two decades. He is responsible for at least fifty sexual assaults and ten murders, in addition to countless counts of theft, vandalism, stalking, and destruction of property. He was never found. In this book, Michelle McNamara presents her own story alongside that of the Golden State Killer, recounting the origin of her true crime passion, and her growing obsession with finding the person responsible for dozens of...

    The Reader’s Advisory Matrix-I'll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara 1.        Where is the book on the narrative continuum? Highly narrative 2.        What is the subject of the book?  The author’s obsession with chasing cold cases and unsolved crimes and her hunt for the Golden State Killer 3.        What type of book is it? True crime narrative, part reporting, part memoir 4.        Articulate Appeal ·          What is the pacing of the book? The author takes a measured approach, giving enough detail to each individual case as necessary but quickly enough that the reader does not linger for long on the more emotional and difficult to read passages ·          Describe the characters of the book. The author herself is truly the main character. Any fi...

 eBook and Audiobook Appeal I’ve only recently begun to borrow audiobooks, with my fancy new 45-minute commute to work, each way. And I’ve discovered that there are amazing audiobooks and average audiobooks and terrible audiobooks. The narrator, I think, makes a huge difference. After all, who wouldn’t want to listen to Stephen Fry reading Sherlock Holmes? And Edward Herrmann, who I adored as Richard on Gilmore Girls, has an incredible collection that he read, including Unbroken and The Tommyknockers . With the right narrator, an audiobook is almost more appealing that reading a physical copy, and that is not an opinion I ever thought I would have. My boyfriend participated in my final project, so I interviewed him and recommended The Way of Kings , the first in Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive. He almost exclusively reads via audiobook and it is available through IPL on Overdrive. That was about 6 weeks ago, and he is already on Rhythm of War , the fourth book in the se...

  The Starless Sea By Erin Morgenstern Published November 5, 2019 592 Pages Summary Zachary Ezra Rollins leads a quiet, unobtrusive life, working through a graduate program in Vermont. He spends his free time scouring the library, preferring to live vicariously through fiction, immersing himself in the lives and worlds created by others. Until one day, when he comes across an unusual book, with no author and the title appearing only on an otherwise blank page inside: Sweet Sorrows . Intrigued, he begins to read, interested in the seemingly unconnected series of short stories until he comes across one about him, in a book printed far before he was born. It tells of a memory he keeps tucked away, that pulls on the edges of his mind, a memory of a door painted on a wall, a door he knew wasn’t a door but that he wanted to walk through anyway. A door that would have led him to the Starless Sea. Zachary’s investigations into the origin of the book attract attention and he soo...