1. What sorts of books do you usually enjoy reading?
2. Are you in the mood for any certain type of book right now?
3. Have you read anything you enjoyed recently? Not enjoyed?
4. Are there any genre's / types of books you do not enjoy?
PERSON ONE
Person one happened to respond to my email first so I worked on compiling a list of reading suggestions for her first.
She answered that she likes reading magical/fantasy, historical fiction, Jane Austen, Douglas Adams, and Charles Dickens (partly because it annoys her library friend--her words!). She was in the mood for a light read that would be good to read at night before bed, not something that would become so engrossing that she would have to stay up all night reading. She recently read and enjoyed Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass and didn't like the Outlander Series or Jasper Fforde. In general she is not crazy about mysteries, Michael Crichton techno-thriller stuff, or things related to horror.
I was a bit daunted at first since I know this person likes the magical/fantasy stuff the most (this is how we know each other, but only through Harry Potter) which is a genre I don't really know a lot about, apart from Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings. The first thing I did was make sure I was familiar with all of the things she listed as liking and enjoying, which meant googling a few authors and reading some summaries of books they had written ( I tend to use amazon and wikipedia for this). Then I used a mix of FictionConnection and Amazon to come up with a list of things she might enjoy reading. Once I find something that looks promising on Fiction Connection I like checking it out on Amazon to see reviews and what other people thought about the book, and often times the customers who review the books will mention things that are similar, etc.
I compiled a whole list of possible things she might like to read, but I think that the most promising things were the Discworld series, which she later told me she had been meaning to read, and a book called Sorcery and Cecilia or The Enchanted Chocolate Pot, which I really managed to find through dumb luck (I found another book by the same author on fiction connection while searching for fantasy books). It caught my eye because of its mix of historical fiction and fantasy elements.
For person one I found myself having to stop from just compiling a reading list of things that I wanted to read since I also like things like Jane Austen and historical fiction. But it turned out that the books that most caught my eye as things I wanted to read were the ones that she expressed the most interest in.
PERSON TWO
Person two, while I know them from our mutual love of Harry Potter as well, expressed a greatly different taste in reading than person one. Person two expressed great interest in history of all sorts, ancient Christian authors, and fantasy (Harry Potter, Narnia, Redwall, Recluse). This was around St. Patrick's Day so he was interested in reading a biography or something that would teach him more of St. Patrick's history. He had recently read a biography of Pontius Pilate and enjoyed the parts that included the facts that we know about him but did not like the parts of the book that were more based on speculation and was also in the process of doing some research on the constitutional convention. He likes history, but not modern history. One of his favorite books he has read lately was about the building of St. Peter's Basilica. And while he likes fantasy, he has never liked Sci-Fi.
For this one I once again utilized amazon, wikipedia, and google to make sure I was familiar with what he was expressing interest in. I also used The Reader's Advisor Online since they offer non-fiction reader's advisor help. I focused mainly with the non-fiction requests he had made since he had expressed the greatest desire in reading more non-fiction next. I tried utilizing the resources available on Reader's Advisor Online for this at first, but I was having a hard time finding St. Patrick there so I turned to amazon instead. I read the reviews of a couple of the St. Patrick biographies and recommended to him both a traditional biography and a book of the writings of St. Patrick. He expressed great interest in reading the two St. Patrick books on the list.
I came up with The Faiths of the Founding Fathers
for him by combining his interest in the constitutional convention and his interest in reading religious works and I found it really just by browsing the non-fiction section of amazon. I really appreciate that they have it set up so you can browse books based on subjects and you can narrow it down quite far, similarly to Reader's Advisor Online. Also, I liked that the reviews, production descriptions, etc were all right there to see.
I ended up giving person two a list of about ten titles that he might be intersted in and he seemed pleased with them, adding them to his already lengthy reading list. He also was interested in how I had come up with the titles so it was a teachable moment for him as well.
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