Week Six Prompt

            According to Neal Wyatt and Joyce G. Saricks (2019), readers of Relationship Fiction “like to talk about the books they read…and are receptive to suggestions” (p. 201). Wyatt and Saricks (2019) explain that Gentle Reads is not its own genre, but instead they include it in their chapter on Relationship Fiction (p. 194), so my thought is that the readers of Gentle Reads are probably similar in this way to the readers of Relationship Fiction more generally. Therefore, my idea for promoting Gentle Reads at the library would involve patrons (who are interested) in addition to library staff. Rather than having staff members come up with all of the suggestions/promotion for the genre, I would want to do a program in which readers of Gentle Reads could meet together to suggest favorite books to the rest of the group and talk to them about what they enjoyed about the books. This would hopefully promote other group members to then read some of the suggested books. A library staff member who is familiar with the genre would also be present to facilitate and make suggestions if needed. It would be somewhat similar to a book club meeting, but rather than everyone in the group reading the same book at the same time in order to discuss it, the discussions would center more on sharing and suggestion-making. Additionally, the idea would be that hopefully patrons new to Gentle Reads might attend as well to get suggestions, and in that way the genre could be promoted to new readers too.  

            According to Katie Dunneback and Mary Wilkes Towner (2010), “[i]ntegrated advisory... includes all different formats and media while staying focused around a genre” (p. xii).  To incorporate integrated advisory into this program, patrons would not only be given the opportunity to share their favorite Gentle Reads books, but also items of any other kind of format that they feel complement Gentle Reads.

Works Cited

Dunneback, K. & Towner, M. W. (2010). Introduction: Integrated Advisory. In Integrated   

            Advisory Service. Denver: Libraries Unlimited, pp. xi-xvi.

Wyatt, N., & Saricks, J. G. (2019). The Readers’ Advisory Guide to Genre Fiction (3rd ed.). Chicago: ALA Editions, An imprint of the American Library Association.