Across the Reference Desk
Summer reading is for adults too. Get out your lawn chair, pour a cool drink and settle in with a good book. What to read? Let us help!"Readers Advisory" is the library term or help in deciding what to read next. Summer is a great time to try new authors or genres. By genres we mean fiction types like Science Fiction, Romance, Family Saga, Mystery, etc. Near the Reference desk is a tower bookcase with a number of volumes of resources that will help in this effort. Genreflecting: A Guide to Reading Interests in Genre Fiction offers a large number of titles and authors in a wide spectrum of genres. You might be reading a particular author you like and want to know others who are similar in style and flavor. If you've enjoyed Ursala LeGuin or Philip K. Dick then Anatomy of Wonder: A Critical Guide to Science Fiction might lead you to more enjoyable authors of that type. Or if you love to curl up with a Grafton novel and have exhausted her alphabet, What Mystery Do I Read Next could offer other alternatives. To Be Continued: An Annotated Guide to Sequels is extremely helpful in keeping track of titles written in succession and this guide does this for a variety of genres. All of these are on the tower book shelf and since they cannot be checked out, they will always be available whenever you visit the library.
The coming of the new century has spawned a number of books of recommended reading considered significant to the development of contemporary thought and literature. Books of the Century from the New York Times Book Review and Vintage Reading by Robert Kanigel are good examples of these types. On the PAC (Public Access Catalog) one can access the New York Times Best Seller list as well as a number of other lists in various genres, such as Westerns, Historical Fiction, even a whole list on Vampires in Fiction. This can be accessed by selecting the option "Reading lists" from the main menu.
Summer is also a time for trips and driving long distances. Our audio book section provides a large and varied collection of books on cassette read either by actors or the authors themselves, and it's a great way to fill those otherwise boring hours between destinations.
The advice here is: be bold! Be daring! Try something new! Summer is a time to clear out the cobwebs of winter and expand your horizon. Let us be a part of that process for you.