Genreflecting: A Guide to Popular Reading Interests

This was my textbook for a MLIS class this semester: Reading Interests of Adults. It’s a great resource for people who regularly need to hook people up with books. There are several chapters about readers’ advisory and how to approach making recommendations to library patrons. There’s some interesting library history in these chapters, as well as advice I wholeheartedly agree with: it’s not our job to judge other people’s reading tastes or try to nudge them toward something “better.” It’s our job to encourage reading. It’s our job to match up our recommendations with our patrons’ tastes.
Besides the six readers’ advisory chapters, the rest are dedicated to different book genres and subgenres. They’re in depth, show more interesting, and chock full of titles and authors to recommend.
We’re going to keep a copy of this book at our circulation desk in the public library where I work, and I think it’s going to be a great help with recommendations. It’s my favorite textbook so far in library school, but I think anyone who loves to read would enjoy paging through it. show less

This was the textbook for a reader’s advisory-type course I took in library graduate school. I found it incredibly useful in the course and am holding on to it as I think it can be of further use in the future. Although largely it is a bibliography, I find the sorting by genre, subgenre, and even further subsections to be more helpful than the standard bibliography. And, of particular note were the essays describing each genre, its history, its readership, etc. To me, it was extremely interesting to read about why certain elements of some stories appeal to a particular audience.

The book is structured as follows: There are a few chapters in the beginning discussing reading and reader’s advisory and then the book dives right into the show more genres: historical fiction, Westerns, crime (detective/mystery), adventure, romance, science fiction, fantasy, horror, and Christian fiction. The final chapter deals with “emerging genres,” particularly women’s fiction and its “kid sister” - chick lit. All of the genre chapters follow a pattern of beginning with the aforementioned essay and then diving into lengthy bibliographies divided into several “themes and types,” as the book refers to them. Each genre chapter then ends with some pertinent information, such as societies and awards related to that specific genre. show less

Honestly, with Goodreads' Groups, Listopia, and recommendation features (both by algorithm and by request from the community), a book like this isn't necessary. Maybe slightly more so for librarians than for readers like me, but, yeah, a skim of my favorite sections gave me no titles of interest.

In both paper and hard copy, this guide is for readers' advisory work. The seventh edition expands on what has been done in previous editions, staying abreast of current culture and popularity of subjects. With Common Core requirements regarding non fiction, one wishes this section was more expansive. Also, with the expanding e-book audience, digital connections to much of the information in this guide would be helpful. THe indices, as always, are quite helpful. Use of this for collection development as well as readers' advisory is recommended, but look at how to digitally collect much of what is referenced in this guide.

This is a fantastic resource for reader's advisory! I thought my TBR list was long before this book, now it has quadrupled. :)