Week 3 Prompt: Using Novelist
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!
Let's pretend that I don't know this series backwards and forwards for a second (off the top of my head, you just read Circus of the Damned and up next is The Lunatic Cafe), and we'll take a look at how to find this info via Novelist!
So, first things first. We need to find out what the third book is in the Anita Blake series. So, let's search Laurell K. Hamilton on Novelist. Novelist automatically attempts to populate LKH as an author in its predictive text, so we can get to her pretty easily.
When we scroll down on Laurell K. Hamilton's Novelist Author page, we'll find a tab labeled "Series." This tab shows us the different series that Hamilton has authored. The first one listed is the Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series. Once we select that, we can see the order of the books and find out which one comes next. We can sort this list by date added, volume, title, and a few other options. Volume is preselected for us, which is good because we want the series order. Now, we can see that Circus of the Damned was the third book in the series, and the fourth book is The Lunatic Cafe.
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.
In this case, let's search by title for Prodigal Summer. The page for this book lists a description and different book appeal terms, as well as reading level and genre. So, since you liked the way it was written, language-wise, we'll look for more books like that. In this case, that means following the appeal terms listed for the book under "Writing Style," which are: Descriptive, Lush, and Lyrical. Down at the bottom of the book page, there is an area where you can select those qualities and search for more books with those features. By hitting Search, we are given a list of 84 titles matching those qualities. Since you want something faster-paced, though, we'll need to narrow it down a bit more. On the left sidebar, there is an area for pace where you can choose either Leisurely-paced or Fast-paced. Let's click Fast-paced.
Now we have just four titles to choose from! Three of these have descriptions, too, so now you can see which one might pique your interest. I'll recommend the Champion of the Scarlet Wolf, so you can start off a new series you might really enjoy!
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!
For this search, we'll just start simple by inputting "Japan" and "Historical" into the search bar. This gives us a list of books from many different genres, so we'll have to use the sidebar to set some limiters on our search. For this search, I'm going to assume we want an Adult Fiction book. Now that we have those limiters set, we can look through the options presented. Alternatively, we can set further limiters in the drop down menus on the side bar, like Geography and Time Period, which would be especially useful if you wanted to focus in on just one time period or area of Japan. Since you want to feel like you were there, we'll look at writing style as well. Let's choose "Richly detailed" and "Descriptive." Now, while our search area is getting smaller, there are still quite a few results coming up that are not set in Japan! So, let's limit our Geography to just Japan. With that, we come up with four results. In this case, I think we'll forgo the Sherlock Holmes book, and instead lets go with Ellis Avery's The Teahouse Fire. Based off the amount of GoodReads reviews and the book description, this one sounds like a good fit.
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?
For this search, let's use Novelist's Author Read-Alike feature. First, we'll search Elizabeth George. On the author page, there is a right-hand side bar which lists Read-Alikes. We'll select View All, which will give us a list of similar authors and what their writing has in common with George's. Notice that Sandford is not listed! To avoid that "creepy" factor, let's cross-reference some of these authors with Sandford's Read-Alikes. All we have to do is look up Sandford and see if any of his Read-Alikes are the same as George's. (Spoiler Alert: They're not.)
Now, on George's Read-Alikes, let's look at the top result: Ruth Rendell. Her author description lists the Inspector Wexford mysteries similarly to George's Inspector Lynley mysteries, but Rendell's non-series titles garner the qualifier "disturbing," so we'll steer clear of those. Of the Inspector Wexford mysteries, Novelist suggests you start with Kissing the Gunner's Daughter.
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?
By searching both these titles, we can find some common descriptions for these Zombie titles. First off, we see "Gruesome." Let's start here. We'll find "Gruesome" under the Tone tab for limiters.
While this search ("Zombies" with "Gruesome" tone limiter, in Adult Fiction) lists quite a few results, take a look at the top 10. Almost all of these are out of The Walking Dead series. Also listed are World War Z, at number 10, and one other book--at number 2 even! So, we can easily recommend Isaac Marion's Warm Bodies, but if you'd like to make sure it's a good fit, we'll click on the title and read some more of the description, just to be sure. Now, that Publisher's Weekly review doesn't sound great--so let's look a little deeper at the two books your husband did enjoy. What sets apart The Walking Dead and World War Z? Perhaps it's the fact that they both have more to do with the survivors' stories rather than just fighting zombies? We'll look down the list a little bit more, and maybe we can find something fitting that description. Since there are so many Walking Dead titles listed here, let's update our search parameters with a Boolean operator. We'll add " NOT "Walking Dead" " into our search terms. Now, we have some different titles to explore. At the top of the list (based on Relevance to our search terms), we have Day by Day Armageddon, which, just by its initial description, focuses more on the survivor than it does on the zombies. Another option which caught my eye, further down the list, is Zone One by Colson Whitehead--which deals with a survivor's view of an apocalyptic New York while dealing with PASD (Post-Apocalypse Stress Disorder). These stories sound a bit more focused on the survivors than just the zombie wars themselves.
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.
For this search, we'll rely on Novelists "Lists and Articles" feature. We can find different articles written by Novelist Users on all manner of subjects, so all we have to do is search "Movies" and then navigate to the "Lists and Articles" tab. There are a few different lists here to peruse, so we'll look at a couple of them. First up: Books to Movies -- 2018. Here we have a list of books that are being made into movies in the coming year--and they even have the date published listed, which narrows us down to the last 5 years! The top two on this list (currently) are a nonfiction and a fiction title, so we've got options! There's The 15:17 to Paris: the true story of a terrorist, a train, and three American heroes by Anthony Sadler, or there's Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer. Both of these were published in the last 5 years, too. Another list we can consult is the Books to Movies-- Adult and Older Teen Archive. On this list, we can see a lot of older titles, but there are some newer ones mixed in as well. Two published in the last 5 years are the Young Adult title Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon (which came out on film last year) or Last Flag Flying by Darryl Ponicsan. This list provides titles with their publication date as well, so you can see what's a bit newer than other things, too.
7. I love thrillers but I hate foul language and sex scenes. I want something clean and fast paced.
We'll use a lot of Novelist's limiters to narrow down this selection. First, we'll look at the advanced search options. We'll select Genre, and search Thriller, while adding a Boolean NOT "Explicit" into our Appeal Terms and another Boolean NOT "Steamy" Appeal terms.
This way, we can look into authors of thriller that might help us out in these areas. Now we can limit our search to just fast-paced titles. Looking at the author tab, we can find books by Dan Brown, Ian Caldwell, John Grisham, and Michael Connelly. John Grisham is noted as one of the "Classic Thriller" authors in Joyce Saricks' Readers Advisory Guide to Genre Fiction, and his legal thriller works have remained popular over the years (83). He's also one that's suggested if you prefer some adrenaline in your thriller, which, since you're asking for fast-paced, I'm going to guess that's a yes (Saricks, 85).
As for me, I like to use NoveList when I'm working or trying to help someone find book information. I'll use it for myself on occasion, but mostly I rely on word-of-mouth for book recommendations, or if I see something that "catches my eye," I'll most likely check it out. Occasionally, I'll use the recommended reading listed from Overdrive, especially if I'm working with ebooks.
I subscribe to ShelfAwareness as well, as it will often feature books that might not have popped up on my radar quite yet. I would like to look into utilizing Library Journal or Kirkus Reviews, but as of yet I am not on the reading list at my library for these publications. I feel that they will be useful in finding materials that might be worth adding into our library's collection, as they have the reviews and summaries that could factor into that decision. These fall on the professional review side of things--but I do have a GoodReads account that I feel I should use more, as it would aid me in discovering other readers with similar tastes to my own and finding out what they are reading. This could also help me to track down materials that patrons or family/friends/random people on the street might enjoy by finding similar tastes within GoodReads' userbase.
Saricks, J. (2009). The reader's advisory guide to genre fiction (2nd ed) (pp. 83, 85). Chicago, IL: American Library Association.
Let's pretend that I don't know this series backwards and forwards for a second (off the top of my head, you just read Circus of the Damned and up next is The Lunatic Cafe), and we'll take a look at how to find this info via Novelist!
So, first things first. We need to find out what the third book is in the Anita Blake series. So, let's search Laurell K. Hamilton on Novelist. Novelist automatically attempts to populate LKH as an author in its predictive text, so we can get to her pretty easily.
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.
In this case, let's search by title for Prodigal Summer. The page for this book lists a description and different book appeal terms, as well as reading level and genre. So, since you liked the way it was written, language-wise, we'll look for more books like that. In this case, that means following the appeal terms listed for the book under "Writing Style," which are: Descriptive, Lush, and Lyrical. Down at the bottom of the book page, there is an area where you can select those qualities and search for more books with those features. By hitting Search, we are given a list of 84 titles matching those qualities. Since you want something faster-paced, though, we'll need to narrow it down a bit more. On the left sidebar, there is an area for pace where you can choose either Leisurely-paced or Fast-paced. Let's click Fast-paced.
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!
For this search, we'll just start simple by inputting "Japan" and "Historical" into the search bar. This gives us a list of books from many different genres, so we'll have to use the sidebar to set some limiters on our search. For this search, I'm going to assume we want an Adult Fiction book. Now that we have those limiters set, we can look through the options presented. Alternatively, we can set further limiters in the drop down menus on the side bar, like Geography and Time Period, which would be especially useful if you wanted to focus in on just one time period or area of Japan. Since you want to feel like you were there, we'll look at writing style as well. Let's choose "Richly detailed" and "Descriptive." Now, while our search area is getting smaller, there are still quite a few results coming up that are not set in Japan! So, let's limit our Geography to just Japan. With that, we come up with four results. In this case, I think we'll forgo the Sherlock Holmes book, and instead lets go with Ellis Avery's The Teahouse Fire. Based off the amount of GoodReads reviews and the book description, this one sounds like a good fit.
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?
For this search, let's use Novelist's Author Read-Alike feature. First, we'll search Elizabeth George. On the author page, there is a right-hand side bar which lists Read-Alikes. We'll select View All, which will give us a list of similar authors and what their writing has in common with George's. Notice that Sandford is not listed! To avoid that "creepy" factor, let's cross-reference some of these authors with Sandford's Read-Alikes. All we have to do is look up Sandford and see if any of his Read-Alikes are the same as George's. (Spoiler Alert: They're not.)
Now, on George's Read-Alikes, let's look at the top result: Ruth Rendell. Her author description lists the Inspector Wexford mysteries similarly to George's Inspector Lynley mysteries, but Rendell's non-series titles garner the qualifier "disturbing," so we'll steer clear of those. Of the Inspector Wexford mysteries, Novelist suggests you start with Kissing the Gunner's Daughter.
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?
By searching both these titles, we can find some common descriptions for these Zombie titles. First off, we see "Gruesome." Let's start here. We'll find "Gruesome" under the Tone tab for limiters.
While this search ("Zombies" with "Gruesome" tone limiter, in Adult Fiction) lists quite a few results, take a look at the top 10. Almost all of these are out of The Walking Dead series. Also listed are World War Z, at number 10, and one other book--at number 2 even! So, we can easily recommend Isaac Marion's Warm Bodies, but if you'd like to make sure it's a good fit, we'll click on the title and read some more of the description, just to be sure. Now, that Publisher's Weekly review doesn't sound great--so let's look a little deeper at the two books your husband did enjoy. What sets apart The Walking Dead and World War Z? Perhaps it's the fact that they both have more to do with the survivors' stories rather than just fighting zombies? We'll look down the list a little bit more, and maybe we can find something fitting that description. Since there are so many Walking Dead titles listed here, let's update our search parameters with a Boolean operator. We'll add " NOT "Walking Dead" " into our search terms. Now, we have some different titles to explore. At the top of the list (based on Relevance to our search terms), we have Day by Day Armageddon, which, just by its initial description, focuses more on the survivor than it does on the zombies. Another option which caught my eye, further down the list, is Zone One by Colson Whitehead--which deals with a survivor's view of an apocalyptic New York while dealing with PASD (Post-Apocalypse Stress Disorder). These stories sound a bit more focused on the survivors than just the zombie wars themselves.
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.
For this search, we'll rely on Novelists "Lists and Articles" feature. We can find different articles written by Novelist Users on all manner of subjects, so all we have to do is search "Movies" and then navigate to the "Lists and Articles" tab. There are a few different lists here to peruse, so we'll look at a couple of them. First up: Books to Movies -- 2018. Here we have a list of books that are being made into movies in the coming year--and they even have the date published listed, which narrows us down to the last 5 years! The top two on this list (currently) are a nonfiction and a fiction title, so we've got options! There's The 15:17 to Paris: the true story of a terrorist, a train, and three American heroes by Anthony Sadler, or there's Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer. Both of these were published in the last 5 years, too. Another list we can consult is the Books to Movies-- Adult and Older Teen Archive. On this list, we can see a lot of older titles, but there are some newer ones mixed in as well. Two published in the last 5 years are the Young Adult title Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon (which came out on film last year) or Last Flag Flying by Darryl Ponicsan. This list provides titles with their publication date as well, so you can see what's a bit newer than other things, too.
7. I love thrillers but I hate foul language and sex scenes. I want something clean and fast paced.
We'll use a lot of Novelist's limiters to narrow down this selection. First, we'll look at the advanced search options. We'll select Genre, and search Thriller, while adding a Boolean NOT "Explicit" into our Appeal Terms and another Boolean NOT "Steamy" Appeal terms.
This way, we can look into authors of thriller that might help us out in these areas. Now we can limit our search to just fast-paced titles. Looking at the author tab, we can find books by Dan Brown, Ian Caldwell, John Grisham, and Michael Connelly. John Grisham is noted as one of the "Classic Thriller" authors in Joyce Saricks' Readers Advisory Guide to Genre Fiction, and his legal thriller works have remained popular over the years (83). He's also one that's suggested if you prefer some adrenaline in your thriller, which, since you're asking for fast-paced, I'm going to guess that's a yes (Saricks, 85).
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As for me, I like to use NoveList when I'm working or trying to help someone find book information. I'll use it for myself on occasion, but mostly I rely on word-of-mouth for book recommendations, or if I see something that "catches my eye," I'll most likely check it out. Occasionally, I'll use the recommended reading listed from Overdrive, especially if I'm working with ebooks.
I subscribe to ShelfAwareness as well, as it will often feature books that might not have popped up on my radar quite yet. I would like to look into utilizing Library Journal or Kirkus Reviews, but as of yet I am not on the reading list at my library for these publications. I feel that they will be useful in finding materials that might be worth adding into our library's collection, as they have the reviews and summaries that could factor into that decision. These fall on the professional review side of things--but I do have a GoodReads account that I feel I should use more, as it would aid me in discovering other readers with similar tastes to my own and finding out what they are reading. This could also help me to track down materials that patrons or family/friends/random people on the street might enjoy by finding similar tastes within GoodReads' userbase.
Saricks, J. (2009). The reader's advisory guide to genre fiction (2nd ed) (pp. 83, 85). Chicago, IL: American Library Association.
Dear Catherine,
ReplyDeleteYou did an excellent job at utilizing captured screenshots to prove your points. You also described your answers in great detail, and I believe that this consumed a large amount of time. So, you made an admirable effort towards the requirements of the prompt. In addition, I believe that you have great skill in navigating and operating NoveList, since I struggled at times to limit my search results and to find certain books with particular qualities.
I found it interesting that you decided to choose The Teahouse Fire for your answer to the third question. I chose Child of vengeance for my answer. I suppose that I interpreted the author’s enthusiasm in her last statement in the question as being for historical fiction and not for description. Child of vengeance also exhibits a strong sense of place, so it may still be considered suitable for the teacher’s tastes.
I also noticed that the “Books to Movies—2018” list from NoveList displayed upcoming film adaptations in 2018, and many of the films hadn’t been released yet from the list. It was wise of you to use an archived list of film adaptations, but you didn’t specify the year that each film adaptation was available for public viewing. I also think that you should have utilized more films from the previous five years for your examples. Otherwise, you’ve accomplished an excellent job with writing your posted response to this week’s prompt.
Great prompt response! You did an excellent job outlining resources used and steps taken to answer the queries, I loved that you included screenshots to illustrate the steps taken. I also loved that you made this conversational as if you were talking this through with a patron. Full points!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the feedback! I feel like Readers' Advisory should be a conversation--thus the tone. Screenshots felt like the natural route--especially if you're trying to explain how to use an online resource.
Delete