Book 51: The Reader's Advisory Guide to Non-Fiction

on
NUMBER: 51
TITLE: The Reader's Advisory Guide to Non-Fiction
AUTHOR: Neal Wyatt
STARTED: Not a clue - at least a week ago
FINISHED: September 5, 2007
PAGES: 319
GENRE: Reference / Books about Books

FIRST SENTENCE: Welcome to the world of non-fiction - a heady, vibrant, and often overwhelming realm inhabited by various types of readers, writers, and reasons for reading; a world of uncharted territory we are only now beginning to explore.

SUMMARY: [From ala.org] Navigating what at she calls the “extravagantly rich world of nonfiction,” renowned readers’ advisor Wyatt builds readers’ advisory bridges from fiction to compelling and increasingly popular nonfiction to encompass the library’s entire collection. She focuses on eight popular categories: history, true crime, true adventure, science, memoir, food/cooking, travel, and sports. Within each, she explains the scope, popularity, style, major authors and works, and the subject’s position in readers’ advisory interviews.

Wyatt addresses who is reading nonfiction and why, while providing RAs with the tools and language to incorporate nonfiction into discussions that point readers to what to read next. In easy-to-follow steps, Wyatt
  • Explains the hows and whys of offering fiction and nonfiction suggestions together
  • Illustrates ways to get up to speed fast in nonfiction
  • Shows how to lead readers to a variety of books using her “read-around” and “reading map” strategies
  • Provides tools to build nonfiction subject guides for the collection
This hands-on guide includes nonfiction bibliography, key authors, benchmark books with annotations, and core collections. It is destined to become the nonfiction ‘bible’ for readers’ advisory and collection development, helping librarians, library workers, and patrons select great reading from the entire library collection!

REASON FOR READING: It came across my desk at work... and I have an addiction to anything that makes book suggestions

THOUGHTS: This book was a reference volume, so there really is no characters or plot to discuss. Wyatt does a fantastic job of keeping her writing and logic clear and concise. The organization of this book was also fantastic. I walked away with a full sheet of titles to check out at some point. This was a good read for anyone who is interested in nonfiction as a genre and why some books work the way they do.

MISCELLANEOUS: It's a good thing I work in a library...

RATING: 7/10 [Very Good]

Comments

Post a Comment