Laura Kirkham Reader's Advisory Class

I attended a book club at a public library earlier in March. The book club took place on a weekday evening and was an adult book club that reads YA books. In addition to the leader of the group, there were four attendees there that evening plus myself. I decided to let the group know from the beginning that I was attending for a class assignment. Who is asking the questions, is there a leader or do people take turns? There was a leader who was a staff member of the library and she asked the questions. She had a printed list of questions that I believe she said she had found on the internet. If there is a leader, does the leader answer the questions as well or let the attendees respond first? The leader let the attendees answer the questions first, but she also provided her own opinions as well generally after the others had answered. Everyone seemed to be very open and honest with their opinions, which included some decidedly negative feedback for the book bein...

            The overall topic of my paper was the National Book Awards. One topic covered in my paper was controversies and criticisms regarding the National Book Awards. The only specific controversy regarding a winner that I found much information about was the 1962 winner in the fiction category: The Moviegoer by Walker Percy (Hedin, 2012) . Catch-22 by Joseph Heller was thought likely to win the prize that year, and Percy’s win was met with controversy regarding whether there had been some unethical behavior in the judging process (which the judge in question denied and her story was corroborated by a fellow judge)   (Hedin, 2012) . I also discussed that the National Book Awards have been criticized for choosing “little-known or obscure books”   (Bosman, 2013, p. A23) , which is something that readers’ advisory librarians could be aware of in regard to these awards that patrons may see as either a negative or p...

               In his article “5 Hoax Memoirs Still Worth Reading,” Jeff Somers explains why he thinks each of the memoirs he discusses still has value despite being at least partially fabricated   (Somers, 2017) . I think the concept that a memoir could still be valuable reading material even if it is not true is an interesting one. I’m not sure I would personally be interested in reading a contemporary memoir that had been fabricated, but I think reading a book like Go Ask Alice by Beatrice Sparks that Somers explains reflected the fears of suburban parents during the time period it was written (Somers, 2017) could be worth reading more as a “relic” from its time period and a look into how one group of people (those parents) perceived the time period in which they were living, rather than as an actual memoir. I think the more distant in the past the fabricated memoir had been written, the more likely I wo...

Author: Charlie Jane Anders Title: The City in the Middle of the Night Genre: Science Fiction Publication Date: 2019 Number of Pages: 363 (paperback) Geographical Setting: The planet January Time Period: Distant future Plot Summary: In the distant future, humans are living on the planet January where it is always day on one side and always night on the other. The temperatures in both the day and the night are too extreme for humans to survive, so they live in the area in between the two in two main cities: Xiosphant and Argelo. In Xiosphant, time is the most important aspect of life and everyone must do the same activities (work, eat, sleep) at the same time, which can be stifling for its citizens. In Argelo, people can do anything they want at any time they want, which creates its own problems. After forming a relationship with a creature that is feared by other humans, Sophie questions almost everything about her life in Xiosphant. Meanwhile, Mouth...