Week Seven Prompt: Fake Memoirs

I read the article about fake memoirs and I was pretty amazed at the lengths people will go to to make money. Of course, we have all heard about these books that are presented as fact but later are proven as fiction but I really didn’t realize there were as many as what were listed in the article. One of the books, Mutant Message Down Under by Marlo Morgan, has always been one of my favorite books. I read it many years ago when it first came out for a book club. I remember, back then, it was merely confusing because it said it was fiction but it seemed so real and I didn’t know there was any controversy. In fact, that year, I gave the book to several people for Christmas. Everyone in our book club just went with the fact that it was realistic fiction. I believe there was a foreword or afterword that explained the situation but no one really questioned it. I had forgotten this element of the book as the years have passed and was surprised to see it on the list in the article.

I wonder a lot about the intention of these writers; are they doing it for fame and money? Literary status? If they wanted to write a good story, why not do just that and claim it as fiction? I understand better from the reader’s side; if you claim it to be true, it had better be true. That is why we are reading a “true story”; because we want something amazing and what makes it amazing is that it is true! I’m sure most of these “true story” readers are fiction fans as well and would probably like the book just as well if it were fiction. It’s just that one tiny element of truth that makes the book that much more interesting. And what makes us mad is when someone lies to us; and not a little one that slips out but a premeditated, bold-faced lie that took months or years to perfect.

Some of these untruths are a bit more acceptable than others though. The list includes some books, like Mutant Message, where the author, I believe, really is telling what they believe is the truth and it doesn’t really hurt anyone. I never understood how this book was hurting the aboriginals. Morgan simply relayed her time spent with them and conveyed how wonderful they are. However, there are others that step way over the line in my opinion. One of the best examples is portraying a holocaust survivor; how hurtful and disrespectful to all holocaust survivors. Herman Rosenblat, author of Angel At The Fence: The True Story of a Love That Survived, on the other hand, is in fact a Holocaust survivor and he only fabricated the love between himself and a young girl during the Holocaust who later got married. True, I agree he could’ve just written an awesome fictional love story and called it fiction but did he really fabricate something so wrong? Maybe I can forgive him more since he is a Holocaust survivor. But I think these fake memoirs have to be taken one at a time to assess the damage and then we can go from there.

Week Six Prompt

I would like to introduce the idea of a mini horror convention to promote horror at our library. Much like our mini Comic Con or ArtWalk, I propose the library contacts local horror artists such as: authors, comic book stores, artists, those involved with filmmaking, makeup artists and the haunted house industry to have a booth in the library where people can visit and buy their goods. Meanwhile, the library can use our materials to promote the event as well as what the library has to offer as far as horror. Displays of our horror books, DVDs and CDs could be placed around the library to promote the event with more added the day of the event. This is a good chance to show the public that we have plenty of horror-related material that they can check out.  Our patrons have shown quite an interest in checking out horror movies so the interest is there. This would also be a great opportunity for some integrated advisory. Most of our patrons only check out horror movies but as conversations take place involving horror movies, staff can incorporate questions about what horror books they may like and direct them as such. Or suggest a book that may have a similar plot to a favorite movie. Many conventions encourage dressing up as your favorite character and our staff could also participate as their favorite horror characters, which is sure to get people talking to each other. Those who are dressed as zombies will undoubtedly like The Walking Dead, this is a great lead in to advise that The Walking Dead started as graphic novels and direct them to The Walking Dead graphic novel display.  They may also be directed toward our non-fiction collection for books on related topics such as the making of The Walking Dead series. This would be a great promotion for all our departments and their horror materials. I propose the mini horror con be held around Halloween in October so the festive time of year will add to the attraction. As you can see from my picture above (taken of myself at the Horror Hound Weekend in Indianapolis 2011), horror conventions are fun and many enjoy attending and meeting new people.

Annotation #2 - Horror

ASYLUM

By Madeleine Roux

Genre: Horror

Publication Date: 2013

Number of Pages: 313

Summary

Asylum by Madeleine Roux, and the first book in the series, is a story about Dan, Jordan and Abby who are attending a summer college while on break from high school. While taking classes, the dorm they will be staying in is a former psychiatric hospital where horrible experiments were performed on patients. During their stay, Dan, Jordan and Abby find strange pictures, receive texts from which no one knows where they came and discover a strange set of rooms in the basement. Roux sprinkles found photos throughout the text to illustrate the photos the teens find. The mystery of the old hospital finally becomes uncovered after numerous trips to town and meetings with the townspeople.

Subject Headings:
Haunted Places

Universities and Colleges

Mental Illness

Psychiatric Hospitals

Supernatural

Three terms that describe this book: 
Foreboding tone
The darkness that shadows this entire novel gives it its foreboding tone. Each person the teens meet seems to have a creepy secret and the dorm reminds one of a haunted house that you might visit on a creepy fall midnight. As the protagonist and his friends do their research, everything they find is foreboding. 

Storyline is complex with an unresolved ending
The storyline is littered with many subplots and the main plot has a lot of twists and turns. There aren’t an over-abundance of characters but the subplots revolve around the handful of characters. The ending is indeed unresolved as there are two more books in the series that follow.

Pace is intermittent
Roux does a great job of intertwining the fast pace with the slow pace. For example, discovering the rooms in the basement was very exciting and fast paced but while they are down there is seems to slow down but then picks up as they ascend to the upper floors once again.

Read-A-likes

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

Fearscape by Simon Holt

The Sleepwalkers by J. Gabriel Gates

The Prank by Ashley Rae Harris

Sanctum by Madeleine Roux (Book 2)

Catacomb by Madeleine Roux (Book 3)

Week Five Prompt

Hope you are getting your reviews read and written. For this week's prompt, I want to start a conversation about the different types of reviews. Different publications review different types of books and they allow different types of conversations. For example, Booklist will not publish negative reviews, while, as you have all seen, Kirkus has no problems with it. Ebook only books, which are increasingly popular (especially in the romance genre) see little to no reviews in professional publications unless they have a big name author, and then still it's usually only RT Reviews (formally Romantic Times) or other genre heavy publications. How does this affect collection development?

First, I have to say, it’s a good thing all of the review sites and magazines don’t review everything alike because we would all get the same review over and over. I’m sure not everyone is going to find every book in the review source they want. That said, I think librarians have learned to adapt to how and where books are reviewed and go to that source if they are selecting that genre.

Ebook only books make us work a little harder but if there isn’t a proper review, one can always check out Amazon reviews if they are so inclined to consider buying that ebook; even though these are not professional reviews (although some may be), they will give the selector an idea of the book. So I think collection development is affected but how much depends on the librarian’s efforts. If they use their resources well, the collection won’t be too affected but if they don’t make an effort to find these hard-to-find reviews, the collection will suffer.

I have posted two more documents in the week five files. One is two reviews of an ebook only romantic suspense novel, one from a blog and one from amazon. Look over the reviews - do you feel they are both reliable? How likely would you be to buy this book for your library? Is this ebook even romantic suspense?

So I went to Amazon to see this particular review and it now has a “Top 1000 Reviewer” badge next to it. While I normally would think this is not a reliable review, I have to stop and think that this person has reviewed quite a lot on Amazon and may know a thing or two about romantic ebooks. I think if you have patrons who want a certain genre and you go to Amazon to check out the reviews, you might want to check how many other reviews they have written.

The blog review is, of course, much more professional –looking with the slick layout and all the correct information. How much more reliable is it really though? Anyone can have a blog just as anyone can write a review for Amazon. I think the blog would be chosen over the Amazon review because of the appearance but what the blog review is saying is not much different than what the Amazon review states.

The other document contains some reviews of Angela's Ashes, by Frank McCourt, an incredibly popular memoir. These reviews are all from professional publications, feel free to find more on your own I just nabbed a few from the Book Review Digest database for you. How do these reviews make you feel about the possibility of adding Angela's Ashes to your collection?

These reviews definitely make me want to add this to my collection – as I’m trying to forget how good this book was when I read it years ago to be impartial. First off, all of the reviews describe an incredibly interesting true story of triumph over horrible conditions – who wouldn’t want to read that? Also, when reviews include statements such as “extraordinary work in every way” (Kirkus), “almost impossible to put down” (Library Journal), “Expect demand” (Booklist) and “A vivid, wonderfully readable memoir” (School Library Journal), how could you not want this in your collection? These reviews make me feel like I want to read it again!

Do you think it's fair that one type of book is reviewed to death and other types of books get little to no coverage? How does this affect a library's collection?  And how do you feel about review sources that won't print negative content? Do you think that's appropriate? If you buy for your library, how often do you use reviews to make your decisions? If not, how do you feel about reviews for personal reading, and what are some of your favorite review sources?

I don’t necessarily think one type of book getting all the reviews is fair but I do think that these books are usually what is selling and being read the most so everyone is looking  for that review – which pushes out a review of another type of book. Again, if the selector is good, they will find ways to make up for that lack of coverage; if not, you will likely have a collection that is totally mainstream and nothing outside of the box.

On the one hand, I think it’s nice that there are no negative reviews in Kirkus; on the other hand, I may like that book that someone else doesn’t. In fact, that is usually the case. I think sources that don’t print negative content 1) will not have a problem with any authors or publishers and 2) don’t like to use up space with reviews that are negative but would rather showcase the positive reviews of books. We as selectors can still determine if sources such as Kirkus think less of these titles because they haven’t been printed.

I love reading book reviews. I am on many email lists such as Barnes and Noble, Penguin and Good Reads. At work, it’s Library Journal, Word and Film and Overdrive. I’m always looking for new sources.  

Kirkus-Type Review

Flynn, Gillian. The Grownup. Hardcover. Crown Publishing. 2015.

64 pages. ISBN 978-0804188975. $9.99.

A woman goes from being a prostitute to a medium in this haunted house novella by Gillian Flynn (Gone Girl, Dark Places).

The protagonist, a woman who grew up poor with a mother who introduced her to jobs such as prostitution and begging, uses the tools her mother gave her to survive. She resigns herself to her job by stating, “I would rather be a librarian, but I worry about the job security” until, one day, she gets a promotion – to spiritualist. In her new position, she meets Susan who lives in a haunted house nearby. When Susan finally talks her into coming to the house to “clean” it, she arrives to a Victorian mansion that seems “alive, calculating”. She also meets Susan’s step-son who Susan believes is possessed by the house; the step-son who is so abusive that his younger step-brother must stay locked in his room. As the unnamed protagonist spends more and more time in the house, she becomes increasingly more frightened and finds she doesn’t know who in the house she can trust. Flynn knows how to write a good story as is apparent in her earlier novels. She doesn’t disappoint with her signature twist at the end. The Grownup showcases Flynn’s ability to pull the reader in from the first sentence, take them to the past and back to the present to experience all the character-driven twists and turns that keep the reader moving at a pace that is swift, only to find themselves at a standstill – the end. Flynn shows her incredible talent and takes the reader on a wild ride that makes the reader wonder who is reliable; is the narrator even reliable? This woman, who has had plenty of excitement in her life from day one, endures more danger that one should be allowed in one lifetime. Flynn’s theme of trust throughout the novella will weigh on the reader much as it does the protagonist.

Like the woman in this story, you will feel as if you’ve been taken on the ride of your life. Will you know who to trust as the end draws near?

Secret Shopper

I visited a library to find a book that was similar to Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells. I found the librarian at the Information desk to be very friendly and anxious to help me. She was courteous and told me she was using Novelist and that it was available for me to use at home. After various searches, she came up with four books, two of which were not in and the other two that were not really what I was looking for. She then took me to the Fannie Flagg section after asking me if I was interested in her. I picked out one of her books that I would truly read but it wasn't really close to my original request. I was looking for something with a group of girls or women who have grown up together and have a special relationship, it didn't matter if it was in the South or not. So Flagg's books do have the settings in the South but not the same group feeling as Wells' book. This was mostly my fault, I believe. I was not completely honest with my answers to the questions she was asking me because I felt like I was dragging this out for too long - this was all coming from me, not from her.

This was an interesting exercise and result because I got to see how a patron would feel coming up to me, perhaps. No matter how friendly you are as a librarian, the patron may still feel like they are putting you out. I wonder how many patrons who I have helped go away with something they are not 100% happy with.