Week Six Prompt: Tournament of Dastardly Devilish Villains of Horror

The star of any good horror book is the antagonist. As a method to promote the horror collection, we can highlight sixteen great villains from horror (e.g. Pennywise the Clown, Dracula, Patrick Bateman) in a tournament to find the greatest horror villain from literature. With an eye-catching display near the fiction collection, this tournament would provide integrated readers advisory for those looking a good horror novel. By design, the tournament is also incites active participation by patrons who love a certain novel (i.e. Stephen King-type horror vs. classic horror). By the end, depending on the number of votes on the tournament, the library could host a small party to celebrate the joys (ha) of horror literature and to announce the winning antagonist.

Annotation (Horror): NOS4A2 by Joe Hill

Bibliographical Information

Title: NOS4A2

Author: Joe Hill

Genre: Horror

Publication Date: April 2013

Number of Pages: 692

Series: There is a comic book miniseries tie-in, and there are several references to Hill’s other works, and those by his father, Stephen King, that are not essential to the story.

Synopsis

Despite its name, Christmasland is not a festive place where good dreams come true. Charles Talent Manx, called “the Wraith” by one character, abducts children with his Rolls-Royce Wraith and takes them to a place called Christmasland, a nightmare of a place where children become gruesome monsters of Manx’s creation. Victoria “Vic” McQueen, a person with the ability to take the “Shorter Way,” is the only person to ever escape Christmasland, and Manx’s diabolical clutches. Twenty years after her own confrontation with the Wraith, Manx is now after her son, Wayne. Now, she has to go back to Christmasland to finish what she started in her own childhood.

Characteristics of Horror

This novel is characteristic of the horror genre with a perpetual feeling of darkness and evil, even when the antagonist is not present in the dialogue. As with most horror stories, NOS4A2 features numerous frightening and unexpected moments that scare the reader and keep them “on a rollercoaster ride.” It features a strong supernatural element in the powers of both the protagonist and antagonist of the story. Throughout the story, Vic is haunted by her encounter with Manx during her childhood. In the completely unresolved ending of NOS4A2, her son is troubled by the occurrences depicted in the novel.

Read-a-likes

It by Stephen King

A Choir of Ill Children by Tom Piccirilli

American Elsewhere by Robert Jackson Bennett

Neverland by Douglas Clegg

In Extremis: The Most Extreme Short Stories of John Shirley by John Shirley

The Book of the New Sun: A Kirkus Style Review

Wolfe, Gene
THE BOOK OF THE NEW SUN
Orb Books
(416 pp. (first half); 416 pp. (second half)
$17.99 (first half); $18.99 (second half)
Oct. 15, 1994
ISBN: 978-0312890179 (first half);
978-0312890186 (second half)







An exiled torturer adventures around Urth (Earth) in the far-distant future where the Sun is dying, until he becomes the world’s leader destined to save the solar system.

When we first meet Severian, both the narrator and protagonist of the novel, he is a boy in the torturer’s guild, who will inevitably be tasked to learning the skills of becoming a master executioner. Despite his numerous claims of having eidetic memory, it is clear that he is a remarkably unreliable narrator. As such, the reader will recognize that there is much more depth to the story than what Severian offers as testimony. As an apprentice who has never left his guild’s grounds, Severian falls in love with a prisoner and shows mercy. Once this happens, he is expelled from the guild into the foreign city of Nessus where his adventures begin and his repulsive traits with women and violence become even more noticeable. He joins the rebellion against the world’s leader: the Autarch. He comes into the possession of the Claw of the Conciliator, a gem that mysteriously gives him the power to raise the dead. Following meeting several people who join him as companions as he travels the dying lands of Urth as a journeyman executioner, he lands the position of executioner for the city of Lictor. However, he loses his comfortable situation after showing mercy (once again for a woman), and barely survives with his life. In full Don Quixote style, Severian finds himself in numerous misadventures: fighting monsters in the mountains, encountering a long-dead monarch, and befriending a young boy he calls Severian. The seemingly random, yet encaptivating side stories lead to a war that pulls most of the ironic side stories together as a cohesive whole and demonstrate the truth regarding Urth and the dying Sun, and begins to paint the larger picture: humanity left Urth for distant planets, settled them, but returned to their dying home world. By the end, Sevarian becomes Autarch, returns to Nessus, and the guild who expelled him, with the tools and will to save humanity. Wolfe’s magnum opus is as much bildungsroman as it is speculative “dying Earth” science fiction with a new language, with Sevarian being a sometimes childish protagonist who accepts his faults and his responsibilities.

A Quixotic and intelligent novel of immeasurable depth that is spellbinding, yet strenuous.

Week 5 Prompt: A Time for Book Reviews and a Time for Everything Else

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?

The “genrefication” of review outlets allows for purchasers to have access to reviews for a wide array of publications in now multiple formats. However, it is troubling as to how much more time is necessary to purchase for print, audio, and electronic formats. A purchasing librarian in a small to medium sized public library has to pay attention to dozens upon dozens of review outlets to make educated decisions to the direction of the collection, on top of programming, administrative, and other professional duties. As a full time, 40-hours-a-week, librarian, I have approximately two to three hours a week to develop two full size collections. And in many cases, server and client PC maintenance, YA programming, one-on-one technology instruction, book clubs, and professional meetings take up all 40 hours.

As libraries are relying upon ebooks to shore up and expand the all-important circulation numbers, longstanding resources like Booklist and Library Journal must make the effort to reviewing ebook-only titles for the sake of libraries, who need to realize and accomplish their multifaceted vision for their communities.

I have posted two more documents in the week five folder. 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?

I do not feel that they are both reliable. Without checking the Amazon user’s other reviews and based upon this sole review, I feel that “Deborah’s” review is poorly written, with numerous grammatical mistakes, and is missing any whiff of criticism, which should be apparent in a four out of five star review. The blog review at least lends written criticism worthy of a three out of five star review. The author has also taken time to create a blog where readers can go who value their opinion. The Amazon review is swaying the book’s aggregated score, which can impact its placement on bestsellers lists without any critical merit.

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 obviously help illuminate the importance of having this memoir in any public, academic, or secondary school collection. Any library that didn’t purchase this book when it was released in 1996 probably purchased it when it won the Pulitzer Prize. Unlike some books that have films made from them, the film Angela’s Ashes probably did not have people clamoring to read the book for the first time (http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/angelas_ashes/).

Whenever there is unanimity in reviews, purchasers should take note that a book is a worthwhile purchase due to timelessness, popularity, and/or literary value.

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?

I think that with the expansion of the “blogosphere” (I apologize wholeheartedly for using that horrible term), the number of books being reviewed is more than ever. I do feel that books from established authors whose books are required purchases (e.g. James Patterson, Janet Evanovich, David Baldacci) should have fewer reviews so that the valuable printed space can be dedicated towards new authors, or even authors of under-reviewed genres, like GLBTQ, science fiction, fantasy, and urban.

Without specifically getting into what budgetary issues facing the average public library do to collection development, even the best funded public library will have to delve deeply into established and periphery review sources to develop a diverse collection necessary to serve a diverse population. Review sources, even blogs, that focus on the books that will sell tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of copies does not help the time, effort, and hard work librarians everywhere have to do to keep the library as a place for reading and learning anything anyone may want or need.

And how do you feel about review sources that won't print negative content? Do you think that's appropriate?

I believe that review sources take the approach that “any publicity is good publicity.” With printed resources, like PW, LJ, and Booklist, printed space is limited and they would use their relatively limited space in promoting good books rather than trashing bad books. Online resources and blogs have unlimited space to do what they feel is necessary based upon their professional journalistic ethics.

If librarians do not feel it is appropriate for sources to not print negative content, than they should not utilize those sources.

While I view Kirkus as the Consumer Reports of book reviewers, their approach to review good and bad content does not invalidate the approaches and content by more “positive” review sources.

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 purchase the both the young adult and music collections at my library. For music, review aggregate sites, like Metacritic, provide an invaluable resource for a time-constrained purchasing librarian. When on the fence whether to purchase an item, having access to multiple reviews on the same webpage helps me make a final decision.

There are not as many aggregate websites available for books as there are for other media. Following best-seller lists, I depend upon review sources from that have proven their worth in creating a well-rounded collection that my patrons enjoy perusing. For young adults, VOYA and Kirkus have been my go-to sources for reviews. I also look through Publisher’s Weekly, School Library Journal, and a few blogs, including the Teen Librarian Toolbox (which has been recently acquired by SLJ).

When it comes to purchasing books, I would say that my decisions are about 40% bestseller lists (Amazon, NYT), 30% reviews from journals (e.g. VOYA), 20% reviews from blogs, Amazon, and Goodreads, and 10% from lists from outlets like NPR and information provided by YALSA and other organizations. 

A Good Horror Novel is Hard to Find: The Secret Shopper Assignment

Finding an Indiana public library where I am not known is much more difficult than most Hoosier public librarians. I have worked in Indiana public libraries since 2002 and been highly active in roundtables, done a half dozen conference presentations, and served on a few statewide committees. By some stretch of luck, I went into an east central Indiana public library on Sunday, February 1^st and did not recognize the three staff members at the information desk. Two of the three staff members were busy either fielding other questions or were handing out computer guest passes as if they were candy on Halloween. I found the reference desk easily enough, even though it is fairly far away from the book collections and much closer to the library’s public desktop computers.

            After visually surveying the reference desk, I noticed that there was no sign mentioning readers’ advisory. I stepped up to the information desk on this busy Sunday afternoon with the simple question, “I am looking for a good horror book to read.” The librarian stated that they had a tool on their website that would help me find what I was looking for. She did not offer any information regarding what resource she was using. She asked me if there was any horror author that I had read and liked. I told her that I read most of Stephen King’s novels when I was much younger, and that most of his newer books were longer than I was looking for this time around. While I was answering I got a glimpse of her computer monitor and noticed she had pulled up NoveList.

            Following my answer to her question, she turned to her associate and asked “It’s been awhile since I’ve used NoveList, what am I doing wrong?” The other librarian pointed out what I observed; the reference librarian advising me had mistyped “Stephen King” as “Stephen Kink.” From there, she used NoveList’s read-alikes to determine authors like Stephen King. NoveList resulted with a few read-alikes: Joe Hill (King’s son), Neil Gaiman, Dean Koontz, and John Saul. She told me that she had heard of Koontz and Saul, but not Gaiman and Hill. I told her that I had read Neil Gaiman’s books. Rather than providing me descriptions of the other authors, or inquiring if I wanted to read another Gaiman novel, she proceeded immediately to find Neil Gaiman’s works in the catalog.

She showed me the 113 results for “Gaiman, Neil” in an author search through the staff view of the catalog. Rather than narrowing down the results to the adult fiction, she pointed me towards the adult fiction and told me to look for Gaiman. From there, she moved on to go back to work on whatever she was doing prior to my question. I walked over to the adult fiction collection. A part of a library, in which I am not a registered patron of, that I’d have never ventured to, and looked for books shelved where Neil Gaiman’s should be. I found two of his books: American Gods and Anansi Boys. These are both books that I have read before. I wandered around the adult fiction section of the library hoping the librarian would approach me in a follow-up.

            After nearly ten minutes of waiting, along with the problematic customer service skills, catastrophic online searching skills, and a failure of a readers advisory interview, I decided to walk out of the library no closer to a horror book to read. Three researchers in separate studies observed that “staff members fail to conduct an interview” and “they do not follow up” (Ross, Nilsen, & Dewdney, 2002, p. 163). My experience on that day, as a librarian moonlighting as a library patron, at that library goes to show that those conclusions were not unsubstantiated. While the interviewer used resources beyond her own knowledge of literature and the online catalog, she did not take the time to provide a high quality interview to determine the interviewee’s reading history and reading wants. Even the simple addition of asking what other authors I like, or even what I liked about Stephen King could have resulted in a better quality of an interview. Following this experience, I feel that it would be helpful for all reference staffs to have quality training in dealing with a wide array of readers’ advisory possibilities. Rather than what amounted to a business like transaction could have been a fun learning experience that broadened both my and the librarian’s reading horizons.

REFERENCES

Ross, C. S., Nilsen, K., & Dewdney, P. (2002). The readers’ advisory interview. In Conducting

the Reference Interview (pp. 163-175). New York: Neal-Schuman.

Week 3 Prompt

1. I am looking for a book by Laurell K. Hamilton. I just read the third book in the Anita Blake series and I can’t figure out which one comes next!

According to Fantastic Fiction (www.fantasticfiction.co.uk), the fourth book in the “Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter” series is The Lunatic Café. There are other editions of the series that may include several of the books. To make sure that you’re getting the next part of the story…does this description sound like something you already read:
The zombie-raising business gets slow in December, so Anita Blake is starting to see some oddball cases. She's got a neatly typed list of eight missing lycanthropes given to her by Marcus, the leader of the local werewolf pack, who wants her to find them. The trouble is, Anita's occasionally furry boyfriend Richard is locked in a power struggle with Marcus. Jean-Claude, master vampire of the city and Anita's other love interest, is getting jealous as well. To top it off, Anita has to solve some horrific murders and keep her bounty-hunting friend Edward from killing Richard and Jean-Claude. Hamilton alternates between funny and fearsome in this larky series about a monster hunter with a few dark secrets.

I assumed that the patron is asking for the fourth book in the original Anita Blake series, rather than the omnibus collections of those series. I chose to use Fantastic Fiction (FF) as I do not have access to Novelist, and I feel that FF is the easiest and most robust resource when it comes to adult readers’ advisory. The description of the book comes from Amazon.com, which is readily linked from the book’s listing on Fantastic Fiction.

2. What have I read recently? Well, I just finished this great book by Barbara Kingsolver, Prodigal Summer. I really liked the way it was written, you know, the way she used language. I wouldn't mind something a bit faster paced though.

I searched Goodreads for books like Prodigal Summer. If you would like to read another book by Barbara Kingsolver, her 2012 novel Flight Behavior is very similar in language and seems to provide a more fast-paced story. If you would like to experiment and find a new author to read, Goodreads members who liked Prodigal Summer also liked All Over Creation by Ruth Ozeki, which is about environmental activism, agribusiness, and its impact on community.

3. I like reading books set in different countries. I just read one set in China, could you help me find one set in Japan? No, not modern – historical. I like it when the author describes it so much it feels like I was there!

For a more “modern” historical fiction set in China, The Crazed by Ha Jin is an excellent book that explores Chinese society set around the Tiananmen uprising. For an “older” historical fiction novel set in China, Taming Poison Dragons by Tim Murgatroyd takes place in 1196, and is very descriptive regarding the civil war that took place.

4. I read this great mystery by Elizabeth George called Well-Schooled in Murder and I loved it. Then my dentist said that if I liked mysteries I would probably like John Sandford, but boy was he creepy I couldn't finish it! Do you have any suggestions?

The Sculptress by Minette Walters is also liked by Goodreads users who also like Well-Schooled in Murder. It is also a British mystery-thriller that flirts but does not cross the horror line.

5. My husband has really gotten into zombies lately. He’s already read The Walking Dead and World War Z, is there anything else you can recommend?

Very much in the same vein as World War Z, Dead Inside, Do Not Enter: Notes from the Zombie Apocalypse is told through notes, signs, and journal fragments rather than in a straight narrative form.

When I am look for books to read, I typically find word-of-mouth from friends, family, and my fellow co-workers at the Pendleton Community Library. I also typically find books to read through regularly selecting books using Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Booklist, and VOYA. While I would love to use Novelist, we at the library decided to pursue Mango Languages rather than Novelist as it fills a major gap in INSPIRE and in our print resources.