Keynote by Nancy Pearl

Nancy Pearl, who "went to Mukilteo to be digitized" (for her action figure), titled her keynote speech, "The Pleasures and Perils of a Life of Reading," and defined herself as "a reader." She humorously gave the example of being "trapped" in the bathroom in the Mallory Hotel on the verge of panic realizing that she had nothing substantial to read. That's when she accepted the depths of her reading addiction.

As a child in a self-described dysfunctional family, Nancy escaped to the local library to travel to the other worlds that books allowed her to flee. She read a great deal, under the guidance of her mentor Miss Whitehead, at the public library and under the spell of books and Miss Whitehead became a children's librarian. During her years of reading and getting others to read she came to realize that "through books and reading we can have any number of lives."

Nancy shared the adventures of writing her books, Booklust, More Booklust (aka Booklust II: The Morning After), and Bookcrush. She stressed the importance of the first line of a book and gave various examples of books she fell in love with after reading just the first line. Nancy inspired us all to continue our love of books and reading and to not give them up too easily in this age of the World Wide Web.

A Fresh Approach to Reader's Advisory

Nancy Pearl presented a fresh approach to Reader's Advisory to many of us in this afternoon's session. She shared that we all enter books through four different doorways; story, character, setting, and language.

Important points to remember when doing RA:

• "It's not about you!"
• You don't have to have loved a book or even read it to suggest it to a patron. In fact it's okay if you hated the book.
• Ask patron to tell you about a book that they liked. In 30-45 seconds you can determine what doorway (story, character, setting, or language) the patron entered through.
• Give the patron three books. One that is very similar, one that is closely related, and finally one that is a bit of a stretch; from a different section of the library even. They shoud share the same doorway.
• Remember that mood can affect patron preferences. Ask "What are you in the mood for today?"

The other point that Nancy brought home to me today was that while the newly published books get the prime real estate, "a new book is any book that the patron hasn't read."

Personally, I find that I enter books most often through the character and language doorways. Sometimes when I haven't read fiction in a while a good story can grab me too. One of my recent favorites was Life of Pi by Yann Martel (character).

What doorway do you enter books through most often? What have been some of your recent favorites? Post in the comments.

Catherine McMullen, Bozeman Public Library, www.greenlibrarianbozeman.blogspot.com