Audience asked to write down 5 of their favorite novels.  The more you understand why you like the books you like, the more you will be able to translate why someone else likes the books they like. 

We should be able to give books to people whether or not we've read them or even like them.  We always think we're the Hamlet in our own play, but we're really the Rozencrantz and Guildenstern in everyone else's play.  It's not about you.

You need to read widely and outside your comfort area.  Easier to say than to accomplish.  There are always parts of the fiction collection or the library that we're not comfortable reading in.  Nancy's not a horror fiction fan - finds real-life scary enough.  Decided that she needed to make herself do this - once a month, she chooses a book that she would not normally read.  In order to be a good readers' advisor, you need to understand what it is about those books that would draw people to them.  You need to understand what the doorway is to that genre.  Finally picked up a Steven King book - Hearts in Atlantis.  Once she finished that book, she understood the draw of Steven King - and she then picked up Carrie and The Stand and Firestarter. 

What we do a lot of in the library is to tell people about the books we've loved.  Sometimes we get lucky, but it's not really readers' advisory unless it's a conversation.  The more you read and the more you learn about books, the better you will be at RA.

Strongly believes that a function of being a librarian is to give people the opportunity to broaden and enrich their reading - books they normally would not read.  A gift we can give our library patrons is the opportunity to experience other kinds of books.  We need to holistic reader's advisory - make use of our whole library.  Our libraries are not arranged in ways that broaden people's reading tastes.  The way we arrange books serves to separate them into their genres.

RA differs from reference service in one big way - in reference there is one right answer.  In RA, there is not just one right answer - there is a range of right answers.  You can always say in a reference interview, did you get the answer that you needed?  In RA, the person can't answer that question until they go home and start reading.  We should end the interview with, "Come back and tell us what you thought of these books."  Everything they come back and talk to you about is important information in learning about their reading tastes.  50 page rule - if you don't like it within the first 50 pages, you should stop reading it.  If you're over 50, you should subtract your age from the rule as a reward for aging; when you turn 100, you can judge a book by it's cover.  (50 page Rule is on Starbuck's cup number 169.)

We trip ourselves up doing RA.  1st burden of RA: We believe that we need to know what a book is about in order to give it to someone - we need to be able to describe the plot.  People don't love the books they love because of the plot.  The reason people want to read similar books is they want to replicate the experience they had reading a particular book.  If you don't know what a book is about, that is not a barrier to handing that book to someone.

Search tip: type in author:read alike in Google.

We don't want to ask, "tell me what a book you liked was about" we want to ask "tell me about a book you liked."  Then listen to what they say in their next two sentences - it will give you many clues that will help you find their next book.  A good book is defined as any book that someone liked.  "A good book for me is not necessarily a good book for you." 

What is it when we open a book and dive into it?  We enter into the world of the book if we like it.  If we don't like the book, there's no real doorway into the book. Came up with the idea of doorways into the enjoyment of a book. 

4 doorways: story, character, setting, and language.  Arranged in the order that most readers prefer.

2nd burden - sense of failure when someone comes back and tells you they hated the book you recommended.  Think about it in terms of suggesting books rather than recommending books.  There's a real difference between recommending something and suggesting something.  When we recommend something, it tends to be from our own experience.  When it comes to books, there's rarely going to be a parallel between our experience and another person's experience.  Reading is too individual.  Think about RA in terms of suggesting. 

RA is a reason for a library building  - a place where people can come and talk about books.  If all we did was reference, there would be no reason for a building. 

Be honest when someone asks you whether you liked a book.  It lets people know it's OK not to like a particular book. 

3-book model of RA: when you go in to Nordstrom's to buy a pair of shoes, you have an idea of what you want.  You look at all of the displays and take a pair that seems to meet your needs.  When the shoe salesperson comes out, they bring the pair you chose and two other pairs: one pair that's similar and another pair that's more dissimilar.  That's what we should be doing with RA - try to give that patron three books.  One should be close to the book they've described, then give them another book that will give them the same reading experience, and then take them to the non-fiction section and suggest a book that will give them a pleasurable reading experience.

Some people feel uncomfortable going to the non-fiction section.  Most of our library patrons don't care whether a book is fiction or non-fiction.  They want a pleasurable reading experience.  When we're looking for good books to suggest, fiction vs. non-fiction is irrelevant.  Displays should include both.  We underestimate the kind of stretching that our readers will do.

If what we're looking for is the experience, if we want to replicate the experience they've had, we need to arrange books in our mind in relation to these doorways.  It opens up the world of the library, and gives you a way to connect books one to the other. 

Button - "Ask me for something to read."  Many library users don't know that we do that.

Doorways. 

Every book has all 4 of the doorways.  Every book tells a story.  It can be realistic, a fantasy, a narrative; every book has a story.  Every book has characters.  Somebody in that book is going to be carrying out the story.  Every book takes place somewhere.  It can the the 20th century, the 15th century, another planet.   Every book is written in language that helps bring the story to life.  The difference in books is the sizes of those doorways.  There are some in which one doorway predominates and everyone who enjoyed that book entered through the same doorway.  There are some books in which a second doorway is the same size, and so some readers entered through one doorway and others entered through another.

We tend to enjoy books that have one or two of those doorways.

When someone asks for a good book, if the doorway they want to enter is through story, the language they will use will contain a lot of action verbs and description.  "It was a real page-turner, I couldn't put it down." "My heart was in my mouth."  Those descriptions say the major doorway is story.  

The primary door that kids like is story.  The most popular children's books are story-doorway books.  The first Harry Potter has story as the major doorway. The subsequent books get more and more complex. 

Story examples: James Patterson, Steven King, John Grisham, Vince Flynn, Dean Koontz, Larry McMurtry, Clive Cussler, Philip Donlay, David Baldacci, Dan Brown.

Take those patrons to non-fiction military histories, fast-paced biographies (like of astronauts).

Most public libraries will have story-doorway books as the largest part of their collection.

Second biggest group read for character.  There's probably a gender difference; men will gravitate towards story books.  Women tend to gravitate towards character books.  Not all, and not always, but generally.  When you're talking about a book in which character is the doorway, they will say. "It's a wonderful coming of age story." "All of the characters were so real."  They'll talk about it in terms of the characters and not what happened to them. 

Look for a book in which the title is either a character name or is descriptive of a character.  "About a Boy." 

A story driven book will have a lot of white space on the page - there's a lot of dialog.  A non-story-driven book will have text from one margin to another.  Character-driven books will tend to be slower-paced.

Character examples: Ann Tyler, John Irving, Dorothy Allison, Janey Evanovich, Harley Jane Kozak (perfect choice for Evanovich readers), Sue Monk Kidd, Ellen Gilchrist, Louise Erdrich, Elizabeth Bird, Faith Sullivan, Jane Austin, Maeve Binchy, Rosamind Pilcher, Chris Bohjalian, Sue Miller, Richard Russo, Barbara Kingsolver.  Character doorway books are better choices for book clubs than story doorway books.

Non-fiction choices for character readers: biography, memoir. 

Setting readers are a small number, but they know exactly what they want.  When asked, they will talk about how a setting is so well-evoked, they want to go there, or that the setting is like another character.  Quick trick for finding setting books is to find books in which setting is the title of the book - Mitchner.

People who love historical fiction read for setting.  Ann Perry's novels tend to have doorways in setting and story. 

Setting examples: Annie Proulx "The Shipping News."  "Under the Tuscan Sun."  Gabaldon's Outlander series.  Tony Hillerman.  Anne Perry.  Nevada Barr.  Tolkein.  Edward Rutherfurd. 

Non-fiction: Armchair travel, History.

The fewest number of readers have language as the primary doorway.  They will say, "I really like well-written books."  "I read this book slowly because I was glorying in the language."  These books tend to be the award-winners.  We need them in our libraries, but they won't tend to be the high-circ books.

Language choices: Isak Dinesen, Annie Dillard, Margaret Atwood, Toni Morrison, Wallace Stegner, Kate Chopin, Alice Monroe, Mary Oliver, Paulo Coehlo.

Non-fiction: poetry

Question from the group - if the language books are those that kids tend not to like, why are these the ones that we teach?  We tend to turn kids off of reading and eliminate the possibility that they will go back to those books when they're ready to read them.  As librarians, we can meet the kids where they are and validate their reading. 

The two M's: mood and motivation.  Mood plays an enormous part in what you will like at any given time.  Don't be shocked if someone who you know reads for character all of the sudden is looking for story books.  Motivation will drive what books you pick up as well.  What are you in the mood for today?  If they're in the mood for funny, it will eliminate most of the language books.  Motivation might be a desire to read all of the classics.