Week Three Readers' Advisory Prompt

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!

        a. The fourth book of this series is The Lunatic Café, as told by a Google search.

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.

        a. The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson. This book has also been noted for its lyrical language and strong sense of the natural world. There is a strong main character and some romance, like Prodigal Summer, but the book should be a bit faster-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!

        a. The Samurai’s Garden by Gail Tsukiyama. This one follows a young man learning from an old gardener and samurai as he heals from illness. Its backdrop is 1930s Japan as China prepares to invade and its style is very descriptive and lyrical.

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. Still Life by Louise Penny. Still Life is the first in a long series of mysteries focusing on Chief Inspector Armand Gamache in Quebec. Like Elizabeth George’s books, this one is described as a crime mystery thriller, yet definitely more cozy than creepy.

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?

        a. The Rising by Brian Keene. This is a classic band of survivors zombie apocalypse book focusing on Jim who is impossibly trapped by zombies yet must escape to rescue his young son hundreds of miles away.

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.

        a. A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman. This book was just released as a movie in December of 2022 under a slightly different title A Man Called Otto starring Tom Hanks. The book is a New York Times #1 bestseller about a grumpy, solitary old man whose world is changed when a rowdy young family moves next door.

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

        a. Where Are the Children? by Mary Higgins Clark. Clark is known for her clean mystery/suspense/crime novels, and each of her books was a bestseller in the US. Her debut, Where Are the Children?, remains her most popular book. It follows a mother with a tragic past, and when one day her two children disappear, she knows the past she ran away from is coming back for her.

The first resource I turned to for this project was NoveList. I love this database and all the ways it can be customized to search for a read-alike, though I am often discouraged with the very “out there” books it recommends to me. Because of this, I turned to Goodreads quite a bit to get more ideas and see how well-rated and popular a book was. I also found Google quite helpful for various blogs or book lists. I often find the website Book Riot very insightful! One example of a hiccup I ran into was on #3. I liked this prompt, but there is quite a range of historical fiction set in Japan, from epic war stories to romances. I immediately gravitated toward Memoirs of a Geisha because of how popular this book is, yet when I did more reading I discovered a significant portion of the story takes place in New York City, and the book is written by a white man (no problem with that, it just sounded like this patron wanted a very authentic story). I found this project very fun, though I would like to learn to use NoveList more effectively for relevant results.