Readers' Advisory Guide to Nonfiction

The Readers' Advisory Guide to Nonfiction
by Neal Wyatt
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I am continuing my readers' advisory reading project (see genre fiction, historical fiction, and mystery fiction). This was a really interesting volume in this series as nonfiction needs to be viewed through different frames than fiction for the purpose of providing readers' advisory services.  It seems obvious (at least it did to me) that subject matter would drive a readers' choices in nonfiction, but there is a lot more too it than that.

"The four intertwined aspects of nonfiction should be considered as individual elements that work collectively to determine the experience of reading. None of these elements stays neatly in a box all its own. Subject and type work in unison. Appeal wanders all over a book. The appeal elements blend into one another, affect one another, and affect narrative nature as well." (p. 22)

Here is my list of potential reading from this book:

• Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero by David Maraniss [sports- bio & memoir]
• A Year at the Races by Jane Smiley [sports-essays & musings]
• Green River, Running Red by Ann Rule [true crime- reporting]
• Blue Blood by Edward Conlon [true crime- bio, memoir & personal accounts]
• The Olive Farm by Carol Drinkwater [travel - memoir & personal accounts]
• An Embarrassment of Mangos by Ann Vanderhoof [travel - memoir & personal accounts]
• Theatre of Fish: Travels Through Newfoundland and Labrador by John Gimlette [travel - history, land & place]
• The 8:55 to Baghdad by Andrew Eames [travel - journeys, escapes & adventures]
• Uncommon Carriers by John McPhee [travel - journeys, escapes & adventures]
• Imagined London by Anna Quindlen [travel - journeys, escapes & adventures]
• Big Weather by Mark Svenvold [true adventure - - bio & memoir]
• Curse of the Narrows: The Halifax Disaster of 1917 by Laura M. MacDonald [history - disasters]
• 1968: The Year that Rocked the World by Mark Kurlansky [history - pivot points]
  
• The Eloquent Essay edited by John Loughery [general NF- essays]
• Best American Essays of the Century edited by Joyce Carol Oates and Robert Atwan [general NF- essays]
• The Fourth Genre edited by Robert L. Root and Michael Steinberg [general NF- essays]
• The Barn at the End of the World by Mary Rose O'Reilley [general NF- religion & spirituality]
•  Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert [general NF- social sciences]

Readers' Advisory Guide to Genre Fiction

The Readers' Advisory Guide to Genre Fiction: Third Edition 

by Neal Wyatt and Joyce G. Saricks
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Very helpful guide to the various genres of fiction including what makes them distinct (or distinct-ish) and what appeals to their readers about them. Also gives author and title suggestions. Which book to start readers with for specific authors or subgenres is suggested, but there isn't any explanation of why that book is the best starting point (other than series that begin at the beginning) and I think that would have been helpful.

 
The end of the book offers a 5-book challenge (read 5 books each year in a new-to-you genre) to build your Readers' Advisory skills. The authors also encourage librarians to create lists from their own collections for each genre and to consider how their local collections correspond to the sure-bet titles in the book.

I was a bit surprised to realize that there are books and authors that I like in all the genres. I didn't expect to find anything I had read in Horror or Suspense because those are genres I stay away from (I don't like the fast pace). But Kathy Reichs and Anne Rice and Christopher Moore are all authors whose work I enjoy and they fit into those categories.