Week Seven Notes and Prompt

Hello folks!

Since I'm on the road I am going to be combining notes and prompts into one, shorter post this week. I am sure you are all terribly disappointed! The readings this week focused on book controversies. When providing readers' advisory services, patrons expect us to know the details behind books that are in the news - without passing judgment. The articles you are to read for this week talk about some of the most significant book headlines of the past. We will also be doing our science fiction and mystery annotations this week. Be sure to read the chapters! Saricks has some interesting points to make about serving the readers of these genres.
Some of you know that I am a pretty big science fiction fan. I have a couple of resources available that I want to post on here - I know I put a lot of reading in the syllabus for this week so I didn't want to add any more required reading. But if you are one of those people who has never been able to "get into" science fiction, I highly suggest reading this article by Jo Walton. In it, she talks about SF reading protocols, or, how people who read science fiction read with a learned set of skills that people who did not grow up reading science fiction may not have. And here is a super-fun resource to share with patrons, it takes the NPR top one hundred SF and fantasy books voted on by listeners a couple of years ago and turns it into a flowchart.

Due by the end of this week:
Prompt Response
Science Fiction and Mystery Annotations

Prompt:
For our prompt this week, I want you to think about fake memoirs, author mills,and celebrity inspired book clubs. Basically write a readers' response to one of the articles you are reading for this week - or talk about a time when a book or author that made headlines affected you personally or your work.

Reminder: Your special topics paper or book talks will be due at the end of next week. For those of you doing the paper, I have only received a couple of topics for approval. You should be working on this - if not now, then starting soon. Please remember to email a copy of it to me via Oncourse mail as well as posting it to your blog. Since several people have asked about length, I will say between 5-7 pages, but really just as long as your topic needs it to be. If it is a little shorter or a little longer that's ok.