Reader's Advisory

So as I was reading the assignments for this week's 605 class, I realized, I could really really love Reader's Advisory. And I'm really pissed that we have like no classes available on that particular subject at SU. I've got to do more reading on the courses, but as of right now, I can't find anything that's just about Reader's Advisory.

I know it's not like a sound profession to tap into in the library field, but it's one I have a lot of interest in. It has to do with the psychology of the people coming to you and how to tap into what they're thinking about. I would LOVE that! I'm such a book eater that if  I haven't read it, and I hear about it, I go out and buy it the next day and have it finished in two days. I devour books! I LOVE when someone comes to me looking for something and I loan them a book out of my library and they enjoy it so much they go out and buy it for themselves. I just did that to most of my friends and the Sookie Stackhouse series. I was like, if you like True Blood, you have got to try the books. They're amazing! And I loaned out like every book in the series (because I own them all) and now my friends are hooked!

I loved how the chapter talked about finding the mood of the patron, because it's so true! It's why I re-read books or read multiple books at once. Sometimes you're just not in the mood for a book or you thought you were and then you just lose interest in it. A book that you thought was terrible one year, when you go back and look at it again (and maybe things in your own life have changed) it's now your favorite book in the whole world. I love it when that happens. Like the first time I read Wicked, I just couldn't get through it. There were too many familiar and unfamiliar things all wrapped up together and I was struggling in my undergrad and needed something much simpler. I would not have recommended that book in a million years to anyone. I didn't even finish it, it just sat on my shelf. Then, about two years later, I picked it back up, started over, and tried again. And I FLEW through it. I passed it around to all my friends and they're all addicted to Gregory Maguire now, they all borrowed my copies.

Reader's advisory is about mood, it's about knowledge, and it's about not giving up until you have that right book for that certain person. Man, I really wish we had Reader's Advisory classes at SU. That would sooooooo rock!