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Showing posts from January, 2024

A Secret Shopper Trip to the Library- "What's a good book?"

       I began this experience already a bit uneasy with the initial approach. As someone who makes recommendations a lot, or just from my own experience working with different kinds of professionals, or even hobbyists, one of the most dreaded questions is “What’s a good X ?” with no other follow up. It’s a question that offers no information for the recommender to go on. It’s like being asked to choose dinner when the other person “doesn’t care, you pick.” There are implicitly a thousand wrong answers to a supposedly open-ended prompt. Recommendations are best when they’re personal and specialized, that’s what makes them most effective. And people who are invested in the thing that they’re being asked about tend to be excited to have the opportunity to flex their knowledge and expertise by making good, effective, recommendations. Anyone who’s ever successfully gotten a friend into a hobby, or a favorite author, knows this feeling of success. It’s not so much about recommending the

Week Three Prompt Response

 Recommendations of books based on: 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! - If you've read Circus of the Damned (1995), then the next in the series is The Lunatic Cafe (1996)! Followed by Bloody Bones (1996). Here's the Goodreads list of the series in order! 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. - Following Goodreads' tags of environment and romance, I found Clear to Lift (2016) by Anne A. Wilson! Clocking in at 320 pages, the pacing will be just a tad faster than Summer while following the same themes of adventure, conflicting personalities and romance in far-off environments of nature! 3. I like reading books set in different countries. I just read one set

My First Annotation! The Frontier Garrison by Jenő Rejtő

 Hello Everyone! My first annotation is posted here for everyone to review! The novel is The Frontier Garrison, an adventure and mystery novel by Hungarian author Jenő Rejtő, under the pseudonym P. Howard.  Rejtő (1905-1943) took to traveling Europe extensively in his youth during the interwar period between WWI and WWII, which would go on to inform his stage plays and written works like Garrison which often featured (and parodied) the French Foreign Legion and their adventurous explorations abroad. His actually enlisting and joining in the Legion is unconfirmed thus far.  Tragically, as the Kingdom of Hungary had allied itself with the Axis powers during the Second World War, Rejtő, having Jewish heritage, took to the pen name P. Howard in order to hide his identity to publish his works. In time he would be outed, and sent via "compulsory service" of Jewish men to forced labor on the advancing eastern front into the Soviet Union, where his life would end in 1943 due to il

First Post!

 Hello everyone, and welcome to my reader blog! My reader profile can be found here , where I introduce myself, my reading habits, and some recent works I've read and recommend!