5 PEOPLE LAB - PERSON FIVE

The last person I did Reader's Advisory for was my mom. She also received the email from me with the five questions; her answers though were alarmingly brief. For the question "Have you read anything lately that you enjoyed?" she answered "biography, i enjoyed it". Wow mom, thanks!

Luckily though I do know her pretty well and I see her pretty often so I am a bit more familiar with her recent reading experiences that I am with other people. When I spoke with her about the RA after receiving her email responses she said she would like to switch it up with some fiction, something entertaining and light. She tends to get really bogged down with these biographies that she reads. She once expressed interest in reading biographies about all of the past presidents; I'm afraid I really ran with this with gifts and things and now she's really just got a pile of unread biographies...they take her ages to get through.

So she said she would like to branch out from the biographies with some fiction, which needs to be entertaining right away (or she'll fall asleep and never read it). It was also, with her, helpful that I knew what sorts of movies she likes (she's a total chick flick lover) so I immediately gave her all of the Sophie Kinsella books off of my shelf, since thats really the only way she will ever read anything...it needs to be delivered right into her hands. I also gave her the two Emily Giffin books that I had on my shelf to get her started with. She has amazingly read all of the books I gave her and is on the hunt for some more easy to read chick lit. I need to turn her on to Stephanie Plum.

She had also recently read "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" and really enjoyed it so I wanted to get her something similar. Reader's Advisor Online led me to Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood" which is another non-fiction book that employs fiction techniques in its storytelling. Also RAO pointed me towards "Devil in the White City" by Eric Larson as another non-fiction book that reads like an imaginative piece of fiction. I also chose the later for my mom because I thought the Chicago setting may interest her. When I shared the two titles I had selected for her she was more interested in the "Devil in the White City" but unfortunately she has not had a chance to read it yet since this is the busy time of year for her at work. By the time I through with her she'll have a pile of books waiting for her this summer.

(Its very nice that Reader's Advisor Online has a section devoted to non-fiction. Its a life saver really for all of us fiction people.)

5 PEOPLE LAB - PERSON ONE & TWO

The first two people I did for my life come as a pair from a social networking site I am a member of, so I am only casually acquainted with both of them, although I have actually met person 2 multiple times in real life. I sent them both an email with the following questions:

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.