Week 2: Appeal Factors

Read Bottom Up is a modern day humorous love story. Madeline and Elliot meet at a restaurant opening and their relationship unfolds in funny exchanges with each other and their best friends. The entire book is written in emails and texts, which makes this book an extremely fast paced read. Just when you think you know what is going to happen, the author takes the story in a totally different direction.  If you are looking for a light beach read, than this is the book for you!

What would it be like to wake up every morning and not remember who you are and what happened to you the day before? In the novel, Before I Go to Sleep, the main character Christine, has amnesia and goes through this every day. She secretly begins seeing a doctor that encourages her to keep a journal. As her journal grows, she begins to learn more and more about herself and the people in her life. Who can she really trust? This psychological thriller is full of suspense and will keep you on your toes!

We Were Liars is unlike any young adult book that I have read before. Adults will enjoy this book as much or more than teenagers. I actually didn't even realize it was a young adult book until I was trying to find it for a customer! This book is full of suspense, lies, and tells the story of a family and how one accident during their family vacation changed their lives forever. This book is extremely well written and left me feeling like I needed someone to talk to about it immediately. The ending is a complete surprise and a complete twist. Once I was finished I read it again to see how I could miss what was coming. It is a must read in my book!

Week #1 Assignments #3-5

The Golden Rules of Reader' Advisory Service are rules that I usually try to apply to when working with customers. I use Goodreads as a way to keep a log of the books I have read and I usually write a little description about the book after I am finished reading. Glad to see I was following these rules with that process! :) I do need to work more on pairing the books I have read with read alikes. Rule 7 was the one rule that I am not certain I agree with completely. Yes, it is our jobs to find out what the customer is really trying to find, but sometimes customers enjoy making that personal connection with a librarian about their opinion of a book. I think after talking to the customer for a bit that you can gage if they want that personal connection or not. I will definitely be looking back and reviewing these rules frequently to improve my readers' advisory skills.


I chose to follow NPR because I thought the page layout was easy for me to understand. I already follow EarlyWord so I didn't want to "cheat" and choose that. The more resources the better! I am not a Scfi person, so I decided to follow Locus to branch out of my comfort zone. This will really be a challenge for me!


Judging a Book by it's cover really made me laugh! I love listening to the reasoning of a child! So fun! I want to ask my own kids and see what they have to say.

Week #1 Assignment #1 + #2

I really enjoyed the two name the title by the book cover quizzes. I scored a 90% on the children's quiz and a 75% on the Adult quiz. I am not surprised by this at all. My background as an elementary school teacher and a mom has given me more access to children's books. This just proves to me that I need this training in order to expand my horizons! :)


Assignment #2 I missed two of the subgenres; thriller and fantasy. These genres are not normally ones that I read, so again I am not surprised by my score. This assignment left with me wanting to learn more about subgenres. There were quite a few I was not familiar with. Looking forward to learning more!