The Barn at the End of the World.

The Barn at the End of the World: The Apprenticeship of a Quaker, Buddhist Shepherd 

by Mary Rose O'Reilley
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I came across this book when I was working on a readers' advisory project at work several years ago and added it to my list of books I wanted to read to expand my familiarity with various kinds of books. 

This book felt very similar to a number of other books I have read in recent years and really liked: All Fishermen are Liars, Uncommon Carriers, the novel Search, and pretty much all the essays of Anne Lamott. 

Mary Rose O'Reilley was raised as a Catholic, started down the path of becoming a nun, and by the time she is writing this memoir she is in her 50s and is a Quaker practicing Buddhism and learning how to farm sheep. She is a complex woman. She is also very down-to-earth and imperfect which made her story something I could identify with and was happy to follow along with her as she tried to figure stuff out about how best to live her life. The book was full of thoughts and observations that I want to remember. These jumped out in particular:

"One of the dicey things about teaching English or lamb haltering is that, in order to focus a student's attention, you have to hammer away at a few central principles which, to the conscientious learner, begin to have the force of law. But they are merely transitional truths, and when you see them start to harden in the learner's mind, you have to gently nudge him or her out of security and inculcate what is always the final lesson: there are, in fact, many ways to reach a goal--several of which are logically opposed to each other. Much of what we call 'knowledge' is merely a temporary frame around chaos." [p. 279] 

"We all see the world so clearly and crisply through our own glasses that it's a difficult imaginative leap to believe another person sees a different scene, logically incompatible with yours." [p.104]

O'Reilly also quotes numerous other people in the course of her explorations:

"'Well, if it's a symbol, to hell with it,' Flannery O'Connor said, speaking of the Eucharist, but perhaps she was joking."

"Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about." -- the Sufi mystic Jelalludin Rumi

And this, which made me think about my father's approach to childrearing:

"As far as the education of children is concerned I think they should be taught not the little virtues but the great ones. Not thrift, but generosity and indifference to money; not caution but courage and contempt for danger; not shrewdness but frankness and a love of truth; not tact but love for one's neighbor and self-denial; not a desire for success but a desire to be and to know." -- Natalia Ginsberg, in her essay "The Little Virtues"

I now know WAY more than I ever wanted to about sheep, but I am very glad I read this book.

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 Mystery

The Readers' Advisory Guide to Mystery 

by John Charles
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I am continuing my readers' advisory reading project (see genre fiction, and historical fiction) and thought this book would be an interesting read that, because I have read a lot of mysteries, wouldn't add too much to by TBR. It was super interesting but I still ended up with a lot of new titles to read.

There are a LOT of resources packed into this short (168 pages) book. Lists of movies, tv-shows, books for discussion, resources to read more about mysteries, as well as numerous titles and read-similars for various sub-genres. There are also sections on collection development and marketing your library's mystery collection that were full of good ideas and an extensive resource list of organizations (like Mystery Readers International), and awards (like the Nero Wolfe Award). 

My main quibble with the book is that they described Ngaio Marsh (more than once) as a British writer. She is a New Zealander and a major mystery writer of the golden age. That error raised concerns for me about the overall accuracy of the book. 

Here is my list of potential reading from this book:

• The Godwulf Manuscript by Robert B. Parker (the first Spencer novel)
• Farewell My Lovely by Raymond Chandler 
• Unexpected Night by Elizabeth Daly (author is recommended for Christie fans and this is the first in the series)
• Death on Demand by Carolyn G. Hart (starts a cozy series set in a bookstore)
• The Body in the Bellfry by Katherine Hall Page (starts a cozy series set in a small New England town)
• Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley (this has been on my TBR list, but I was reminded that I need to get to this one)
• The Blessing Way by Tony Hillerman (I suspect this book won't be to my taste, but it is a style of mystery I haven't read (Western) and should check out)
• Death of an Englishman by Magdalen Nabb (set in Italy and a read-similar for the Donna Leon novels)
• Dashiell Hammett: A Life by Diane Johnson
• Agatha Christie: A Biography by Janet Morgan
• Black Beech and Honeydew: An Autobiography by Ngaio Marsh
• Bloody Murder: From the Detective Story to the Crime Novel by Julian Symons (1993 edition)
• A Talent to Deceive: An Appreciation of Agatha Christie by Robert Barnard

I am only planning to read one more of these Readers' Advisory Guides which is a good thing because my TBR list is getting out of control! If only it were true that librarians just sit around all day reading.

Readers' Advisory Guide to Historical Fiction

The Readers' Advisory Guide to Historical Fiction 

by Jennifer S. Baker
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As I mentioned in my sign-up post for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge I am not a big reader of this genre. I have been working on my readers' advisory skills recently for work and I read this book as part of that project. I found it very interesting -- particularly the definitions of sub-genres and what seemed to be a tremendous struggle to get these massive tomes to fit into any kind of classification structure. Ultimately I'm not sure they do. I was somewhat reassured by the numerous books discussed in this volume that I have read. 

One of the key pieces of advice in this book is that to get to know this genre (or any other) you need to read in it. A reading plan is provided at the end of the book, but as I was reading I kept notes of titles that appealed to me so have constructed my own Historical Fiction reading plan. This list constitutes thousands of pages of reading, even if I don't continue with any of these series,  so I am not setting any time-frame for completing it, but am compiling a list of potential reading for future reference.

There are a few authors that I want to read something by, but don't have a specific title in mind:

• Howard Fast (I remember my Mom reading his books when I was a kid)
• Jean Plaidy 
• Mazo de la Roche (the Whiteoaks of Jalna series--set in Canada)

Then there are specific books that looked interesting to me:

• Stonehenge by Bernard Cornwell (set in pre-history)
• I, Claudius by Robert Graves (set in the ancient world)
• A Sudden Country by Susan Fisher (the Oregon Trail -19th century)
• Birds Without Wings by Louis de Bernieres (fall of the Ottoman Empire -20th century)
• The Day the Falls Stood Still by Cathy Marie Buchanan (set in Canada -early 20th century)
• Lionheart by Sharon Kay Penman (biographical fiction, historical figure)
• The Painted Kiss by Elizabeth Hickey (biographical fiction, artist)
• The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver (from section on Latino fiction)
• The Outlander by Gil Adamson (set in the Canadian West)
• And Only to Deceive by Tasha Alexander (a mystery series for Amelia Peabody fans) 
• Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree by Tariq Ali (first book in a time-sweep series about a Muslim family in Granada in 1492)

There were also some titles that were already on my TBR list that I am even more excited about now:

• Lust for Life by Irving Stone
• Passing by Nella Larsen
• New York by Edward Rutherford

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.