By Sarah Statz Cords

Recently an article appeared in the BBC News Magazine about a new nonfiction genre being referred to as “Annualism.” According to Finlo Rohrer, the article’s author, Annualism books are those in which “the author shows their power of endurance by doing something odd for a year.”*

With all due respect to the Beeb, I think the Reader’s Advisor Online beat them hands down on making a note of this style of book. Take a book like Doug Fine’s Farewell, My Subaru: An Epic Adventure in Local Living, in which the author pledges to live off the grid in New Mexico for at least a year. If you look that title up in the RAO, you’ll find that it has been tagged with the topic “Year in the Life.” This isn’t a perfect subject tag—not all memoirists and journalists undertake these book-ready adventures for a year—but I’ll admit I think it’s just as catchy as “Annualism.”

Subscribers to our database would find, in clicking on that tag, a variety of such other fun nonfiction books (which vary widely on subject), including Beth Lisick’s Helping Me Help Myself: One Skeptic, Ten Self-Help Gurus, and a Year on the Brink of the Comfort Zone; Steven Rinella’s wonderful The Scavenger’s Guide to Haute Cuisine; and Logan Ward’s See You in a Hundred Years: Four Seasons in Forgotten America. But, just in case the theme tag “Year in the Life” doesn’t work for you, we’ve got you covered in another way.

One of the subgenres we offer, under the broader heading of “Investigative Writing,” is “Immersion Journalism,” which we’ve defined as what “writers engage in when they go beyond the bounds of objectively researching a story and instead step directly into it, living whatever experience they’re writing about and periodically injecting their own reactions and thoughts into their narrative. They are often researched over long periods of time and are sometimes referred to as the ‘literature of the everyday’ for the insight into ordinary lives and mundane details that they provide.”

Simply by browsing our Immersion Journalism subgenre, subscribers would find titles like Barbara Ehrenreich’s popular Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By In America, Ted Conover’s Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing, A.J. Jacobs’s The Year of Living Biblically, and George Plimpton’s classic Paper Lion.

Call it what you will—”annualism,” “gimmick books,” “year in the life,” “immersion journalism”—the fact remains that recent years have found us in a whole new world of nonfiction styles, genres, and offbeat subjects that don’t easily lend themselves to subject headings. And we’re just happy to be in on the conversation! So how’s about it? Who wants to write the book on working with readers for a year? A year behind the reference desk? We all know there’re a few stories to be told there…

*This is a British article, and refers at one point to a book published in the UK, titled Chastened: No More Sex in the City. Is it wrong that my favorite part of the article was in the comments, where someone opined, “If merely not having sex for a single, measly year is deemed worthy material for a book, then I ask that publishers get in touch with me at once: I have a blockbuster pending”?

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By Sarah Statz Cords

The other day the Reader’s Advisor Online got a nice shout-out from the blogger at The Librarian’s Brain (which we appreciate; thank you!). And in a true case of missing the forest because of the trees, that blogger reminded us about one of the features of RAO which we’ve forgotten to highlight lately: our Related Themes book lists. For those of you who are subscribers, just click on “Browse” in the upper-left corner, and then select “Related Themes” from the menu at left to see all the lists available.

In addition to pulling together titles by subject, theme, and other attributes, the Related Theme lists are also a place where we highlight new genres. One such example? Our list of “Mommy Lit” titles, below. This list, as always, is just a starting point; can you think of any titles in this new subgenre that we missed?

Lisa Belkin–Confessions of an Unbalanced Mom (nonfiction)
Adam Gopnik–Through the Children’s Gate (nonfiction)
Jane Green–Babyville
Jill Kargman–Momzillas
Sophie Kinsella–Shopaholic and Baby
Kate Long–The Bad Mother’s Handbook
Cheryl Mendelson–Morningside Heights
Eliza Minot–The Brambles
Austin Murphy–How Tough Could It Be: The Trials and Errors of a Sportswriter Turned Stay-at-Home Dad (nonfiction)
Alison Pearson–I Don’t Know How She Does It
Melissa Senate–The Solomon Sisters Wise Up
Lisa Tucker–Shout Down the Moon
Anne Tyler–Digging to America
Jennifer Weiner–Little Earthquakes
Meg Wolitzer–The Ten-Year Nap
Laura Zigman–Piece of Work

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By Sarah Statz Cords

I am eagerly waiting for my copy of Breaking Dawn, the fourth book in Stephenie Meyer’s massively popular Twilight series which is due to be published August 2. I’m on the library waiting list, and I’m starting to get desperate! So, to keep my mind off the wait, I thought it might be a good time to talk Twilight read-alikes, as well as to show off a bit of what the Reader’s Advisor Online can do for readers jonesing for books “just like” the Meyer novels.

The most obvious stop for read-alikes in the RAO is, of course, the basic title record for the first book in the series, Twilight. Diana Tixier Herald, author of Genreflecting and numerous other titles on fantasy and science fiction, as well as a voracious reader of the genres herself, suggested these read-alikes:

“The Twilight series is not just about vampires, but also features strong girls, strong friendships, and romantic entanglement. The following series all share those themes. P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast’s House of Night series features 16-year-old Zooey Redbird, whose adventures involve friendship, enemies and romantic interests; start with Marked. Richelle Mead’s Vampire Academy series is set at St. Vladimir’s school where Lissa and Rose find danger and romance; start with Vampire Academy. Julie Kenner’s Ghoul series (aka Beth Frasier series) features a normal high school girl who is turned into a vampire so she can find the formula that will allow the vampires in her school to go out in the daytime; start with The Good Ghoul’s Guide To Getting Even. Ellen Schreiber’s Vampire Kisses series features Raven, a goth girl who falls for a vampire; start with Vampire Kisses.”

Nothing there catches your fantasy? Then you could always pick the genre “Teen Paranormal Romance” from the Read-Alike Finder and get these titles: Vivian Vande Velde’s Companions of the Night, Richie Tankersley Cusick’s The House Next Door, or Meg Cabot’s Jinx. Still not tired? Combining the tags “Vampires” and “Teen” also yields some interesting suggestions: the short story compilation The Restless Dead; Cassandra Clare’s City of Ashes, and Scott Westerfeld’s Peeps (which happens to be one of my favorite books of all time).

That’s what I love about RAO—tailored title-to-title read-alike lists made specifically by RA experts, as well as additional ways to combine searches and find even more. Okay. I think I can keep waiting…and in the meantime I’m totally going to look into Richie Tankersley Cusick’s The House Next Door.

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Here’s an update on what’s new with RAO–

Series
We just published a new feature that our users have been asking for — in the Advanced Search, you can now refine a search by “In A Series” to limit results to titles in series only. Gee, the description is longer than the example!
1. At the Advanced Search page, enter James Patterson in the author field.
2. Under Refine Your Search, check “In A Series” and click Search
Voila!

Teen Nonfiction
We have started adding Teen Nonfiction; so far we’ve added Teen True Adventure, True Crime, and Teen Life Stories. You can browse the titles through the “Genre Tree” on the Advanced Search page.

Reader’s Advisor News: The Original. Beware of Imitations!
We just released the June 2008 issue of our free e-zine, the Reader’s Advisor News, sponsored by the Reader’s Advisor Online/Libraries Unlimited. Be sure to check it out! (Oh, and some of you may have noticed that our esteemed colleagues at another publishing house have circulated an e-newsletter with the name “RA News”. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, right? Our Readers’ Advisor News has great content that you won’t find elsewhere about readers’ advisory–real information, not just product promo. And we have been publishing the Reader’s Advisor News since June 2005! So if you have missed any issues, check it out!)

ALA Anaheim
We are in booth #1438 and will be demonstrating RAO:
4:15 PM Saturday 6/28
2:15 PM Sunday 6/29
10:15 AM Monday 6/30

Be sure to stop by! We’d love to hear from you!

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By Diana Tixier Herald

Stephenie Meyer is hot stuff!

Not only is she one of Time’s Most Influential 100 people she is the talk of book lovers everywhere. In the Most Read Books section of GoodReads this week, her books hold 3 of the top 5 spaces (the other two are Eat, Pray, Love and Water for Elephants.) The Host is number 1. When checking the same list for the month’s totals, Meyer’s The Host is still number 1, and Twilight is number 4. When looking at the all time list, Twilight is #10, coming in just after Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.

On Shelfari Twilight is #5 in the books with most comments, #4 for books with most reviews, #5 for Most Favorite books (just after The Da Vinci Code), and Breaking Dawn, the next book in the Twilight series that isn’t even out yet, has 909 people listing it as their most wished for book. At Library Thing Twilight has the 6th most reviews.

Obviously, this author is a current phenomenon. But just to explain for anyone who has been on another planet for the last few years, Meyer’s Twilight series is a young adult vampire romance series enjoyed by teens and adults alike. So how do you find a reader something to hold them over until the next book?

One of the great things about our product Reader’s Advisor Online is that it looks beyond genre designations and subjects to provide great read-alikes that are determined by actual readers’ advisors rather than by some computer algorithm that matches words but not complex relationships. Reader’s Advisor Online is a great tool when a book crosses genre lines because books like this can be classified in all the genres in which they fit.

Because vampires have traditionally been the denizens of horror novels, it makes sense that lots of people would look for a book about vampires in the horror section. So Twilight is classified as teen speculative fiction, paranormal and horror, as well as a vampire story. But it is also very much a romance. Romance is a huge genre in teen fiction and these books fit into the alternate reality romance and the subdivision paranormal romance in our genre tree.

Another great feature of Reader’s Advisor Online is Related Reads. Because I had read Twilight and talked about it with teen readers, I came to the conclusion that readers liked it not only because of the vampire element, but also because it features a strong female protagonist, strong friendships, and a romance fraught with difficulties.

There are literally hundreds of teen books about vampires, but the appeal is often very different from book to book. For example The Chronicles of Vladimir Tod by Heather Brewer and Vampire High by Douglas Rees are long on humor and feature male protagonists, so readers who just want to read about vampires may enjoy them, but those who want the female protagonist and the romantic elements will be disappointed. Some vampire tales are truly horror and meant to terrify—not exactly what readers of Twilight are seeking. Scott Westerfeld is, like Stephenie Meyer, one of the most popular writers for teens today and his novel Peeps is about vampires, but his vampires are creepy, not sexy, and science plays a big role, throwing this book into the realm of science fiction rather than paranormal. Confusing isn’t it?

The related reads one finds when looking up Twilight in Reader’s Advisor Online are books that contain combinations of the above mentioned elements including the House of Night series and the Vampire Academy series. Both series feature female protagonists, romance, and vampires that are presented in a romantic rather than horrifying manner. Be sure to check out the Twilight series in Readers Advisor Online for more great read-alikes that will really appeal to the fans of Stephenie Meyer.

Because the related reads in RAO are done on a title by title basis, rather than author by author, the read-alikes for Meyer’s The Host in our product are quite different from those for the Twilight series, keying in on the appeals of this atypical science fiction tale of possession.

In short, finding great read-alikes is much more complicated than searching a topic such as vampires, and this is where RAO can shine. Give it a try. For a free trial subscription, click here.

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Sarah Statz Cords, from Madison Public Library, Wisconsin, author of The Real Story, and associate editor for the Reader’s Advisor Online, will be offering a web-based demonstration Friday, June 13, 2008 at 1PM EDT / 10 AM PDT. Attendees will view the training via the web and will call a conference number to enable full participation in the training. Spaces are limited — please register ASAP! You may reserve a seat by emailing laura.calderone@lu.com. Confirmation of registration and access instructions will be sent by email.

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By Sarah Statz Cords

The biggest book party of the year kicks off this Thursday, May 29, when BookExpo America opens up shop at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Is anyone going?

If you are, I am SO jealous. I actually took my vacation to Chicago a few years ago expressly to go to BookExpo, and it was one of my best vacations ever. The conference includes numerous panels, discussions, and workshops on books, reading, publishing, and trends, not to mention an exhibits floor jam-packed with advance copies of new books, publishers’ representatives, and tons of author autographing booths and events. It is an event not to be missed for anyone who’s interested in books and reading.

And it’s only getting better–Every year BEA becomes more “librarian friendly,” offering programs and events specifically for library staff. And this year? The Reader’s Advisor Online is going to be there, taking part in the Day of Dialog for Publishers, Vendors, and Librarians (sponsored by Library Journal and held at the central Los Angeles Public Library)! From 9:15 to 10:30 a.m. on Thursday, May 29, Libraries Unlimited’s electronic products managing editor, Laura Calderone, will be taking part in the “Reader’s Advisory Challenge,” which will also feature representatives from Books and Authors, the Fiction and Non-Fiction Connection, and Novelist.

It’s going to be a great day, and a great show, for readers’ advisory and library staff! And if you are attending, do feel free to email us or comment and let us know what you’ve learned or just how much fun you had at the show!

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News flash!

The video of Sarah Statz Cords demonstrating the Reader’s Advisor Online is available at:
http://rainfo.lu.com/videos.aspx

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