5 PEOPLE LAB - PERSON FOUR

The fourth reader I advised for my lab was a good friend of mine. I once again conducted the interview by email using the same questions as before.

This person told me that they like to read funny things as well as memoirs. They have the new Chelsea Handler book on reserve at the library. Recently she read a book called Forever by Pete Hamill. Most of what she reads is from the New York Times Bestseller List. The only thing she expressed no interest in reading was science-fiction.

The first thing I thought of, even before I got the interview answers from her, was the Kristin Chenoweth book discussed earlier in class. I used Reader's Advisor Online as well though and searched for Chelsea Handler and came up with two other funny sounding memoirs written by women for her to read: Trailer Trashed by Hollis Gillespe and The Idiot Girl's Action-Adventure Club by Laurie Notaro.

After recommending a few memoirs for her I used RAO to look up "Forever" the book she had just read and enjoyed. RA did not have any specific recommendations based on this book, they just pointed me towards Epic novels based on and in major cities. This did not really sound like what she was interested in so I did a little searching on what it seemed like the other aspect of the novel was, which was immortality. The books RA gave as matches in subject for immortality seemed to all border mostly on the fantasy/sci-fi, which I wanted to avoid. So then I turned instead to maybe books about New York, which is what "Forever" is. The book I ended up picking for her based on "Forever" didn't really interest her. I really need to follow up with her and find out what about the book she liked so much.

Since she expressed an interest in reading funny books next, in addition to the memoirs that all sounded very funny, I wanted to give her some suggestions for just fiction books. Since I know her well and I know she loves the movie Fried Green Tomatoes, I thought another Fannie Flagg book would interest her, so I recommended "Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man". Humor, the south, resurrection scams...can't really go wrong with that. I also came up with a book called "Apologize Apologize" that I thought sounded promising for her; funny in a dysfunctional sort of way.

I also couldn't help but suggest she read some Janet Evonovich since that would be some great summer reading.

Her feedback was very positive for the memoirs, Fannie Flagg, and "Apologize, Apologize". She was really excited to read the memoirs especially. I'm going to have to re-follow up with her because I want to be able to recommend something similar to "Forever" for her, although it could have just been a one-off book that she enjoyed I guess and not something she wants to read more of.