I'm a reference librarian. I find information. I show people how to use databases. I solve puzzles. I am not a Readers Advisor.
For one thing, my own reading is pretty narrow. I hate mysteries. Bodice rippers bore me anymore. The most popular authors in the most popular genres just don't do it for me. My non-fiction reading is totally devoted to food. I do read science fiction and fantasy -- and the occasional thriller. I also read chick lit, but I'm getting over it. But unless you like to read what I like to read, I'm no help to you. Reading is personal to me and I'm not going to read stuff just to be useful.
That said, for the last 8 months, I've been my mother's Personal Librarian.
That she even trusted me to pick books for her says a lot about my mother's belief in my abilities as a librarian (or maybe she was just using me). She wasn't quite as narrow in her reading as I -- but she did hate mysteries, was bored with bodice rippers, and indulged in the VERY occasional thriller. However, she did NOT read science fiction and fantasy. She liked Danielle Steele! She liked Southern fiction -- but none of the authors you'd expect someone who liked Southern fiction to read. She liked historical novels, but no Elizabethan settings (what did she have against Elizabeth??). I could go pre-Eliz and post-Eliz, but Eliz herself? Anathema!! She read Christian fiction, but I had to be careful with that. If it was too... sappy, she gave me the stink eye. She did like a good adventure story every now and then, and I managed to find a few that didn't get tossed back into the bookbag immediately (that was the definitive sign of choice failure). I will have to give her credit, though; if I did find a good one, she bragged on me Big Time -- throughout her reading of the book. I think she was worried that I'd stop trying if she didn't acknowledge my successes.
At first, I hated being responsible for finding Mama's most important entertainment avenue. Reading was so much a part of who she was and it was her biggest act of daily living. It freaked me out, and I dreaded the Tuesday night book pull. But as the weeks wore on, I started to view it as a reference question -- a puzzle to be solved for a favorite patron. I found myself making her book choices in much the same way I would approach constructing a search for a difficult topic. I didn't look for similar authors -- that blew up on me early on. But I looked for similar themes. I read a few pages of possible titles and considered how the book "read" -- would she find the writing style compelling or would she throw it in the bag by paragraph 3? Setting was often hit or miss (Elizabeth I was a good example of a miss), but I got pretty good at figuring out that a book set in Montana in 1843 would not go over, but that a book set in Missouri at the same time would probably make the table rather than the bag. Being Mama's Personal Librarian started to be fun.
Now that job has ended. I'll miss the Tuesday night book pull and trying to second guess her reading taste. I'll miss the disappointment of seeing 10 out of 12 books stay in the bookbag and the feeling of accomplishment that 6 books on the table brought. In some ways, being her librarian made me feel closer to her. It brought us together on a level that was more "friends" than "mother and daughter." It gave us something to talk about other than her health and the boredom of being homebound. I think my efforts to keep her in good books was successful overall. I know she'd say they were.
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