Week 3's Prompt Responses

 Question 1:  I am looking for a book by Laurell K. Hamilton. I just read the third book in the Anita Blake series and I can’t figure out which one comes next!

    The fourth book in the Anita Blake series is Lunatic Cafe. I use Fantastic Fiction whenever I need to find a list of books chronologically. The user can do a search by author, title, or by the series name. 

Question 2: What have I read recently? Well, I just finished this great book by Barbara Kingsolver, Prodigal Summer. I really liked the way it was written, you know, the way she used language. I wouldn't mind something a bit faster paced though.

    I would recommend three titles: The Fifth Sacred Thing, by Starhawk, Tales of Burning Love by Louise Erdrich, and Bitter Grounds by Sandra Benitez.  To answer this question, I used the RA site What Should I Read Next?. The user enters the title and the site compiles a list of similar materials based on the analyzed data from the book. 

Question 3: I like reading books set in different countries. I just read one set in China, could you help me find one set in Japan? No, not modern – historical. I like it when the author describes it so much it feels like I was there

 The Last Children of Tokyo by Yoko Tawada is among a list of recommendations provided by RA site Which Book. This is one of my favorite sources to use when assisting patrons. It lets you search via multiple ways: Mood/emotion, World Map, Character and Plot, and Books By Best Seller. 

Question 4: I read this great mystery by Elizabeth George called Well-Schooled in Murder and I loved it. Then my dentist said that if I liked mysteries I would probably like John Sandford, but boy was he creepy I couldn't finish it! Do you have any suggestions?

A Fatal Grace, by Louise Penny,  definitely seems a fit for this person.  I used the the RA site What Should I Read Next to answer this question. Among the list of titles suggested was Deborah Crombie's A Share in Death, but in reviewing the preview, that also seemed really creepy. 

Question 5: My husband has really gotten into zombies lately. He’s already read The Walking Dead and World War Z, is there anything else you can recommend?

I would recommend David Wellington's Monster Island series. The series is composed of three zombie novels: Monster Island, Monster Nation, and Monster Planet. I used the RA site What Should I Read Next, and it listed the first two books in the series. I then visited Fantastic Fiction to see what other books that author offered, and saw that it was a trilogy.  

Question 6: I love books that get turned into movies, especially literary ones. Can you recommend some? Nothing too old, maybe just those from the last 5 years or so.

Using Book Riot, three main ones that I came across were The Color Purple by Alice Walker, Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson, and Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus. The Color Purple had already been made into a film in '85, then it was released as a musical, and now the MUSICAL is being made into the movie. According to Book Riot, Oprah Winfrey bought the movie rights to Black Cake before the book had even hit the shelf. Lessons in Chemistry actually was made into a TV mini series rather than a movie, so I am not quite sure if that would be of interest to the person asking the question. 

Question 7:  I love thrillers but I hate foul language and sex scenes. I want something clean and fast paced.

This question allowed me to return to Which Book to find Echoes From the Dead, by Johan Theorin among titles suggested. I used the Mood and Emotion tab, and using the sliding scale, selected No Sexual Content, and mostly Unpredictable. I experimented with another slide, adding in slightly Disturbing, and found the book East of Hounslow by Khurrum Rahman, which also seems to be a good fit with the criteria stated. 

As for myself, my To Be Read list is compiled many different ways, mostly through my job. One of my responsibilities is ordering non-fiction, so as I peruse the Library Journal and Kirkus Reviews, lots of titles catch my attention. Also, I maintain our non-fiction collection, so as I weed, books jump out at me. I also handle transits and inter-library loans, so I constantly see what our patrons are requesting and I jot down titles that appeal to me. Last but not least, word of mouth. Many of my friends are also avid readers so we constantly swap titles or discuss books we're reading.