This reader's advisory stuff is getting easier

It's nicest when people ask for books and it turns out that we have the exact same taste. Because I can just tell them about all my favorites and they think I'm this brilliant mind-reader. And usually we become best friends and I invite them to join our book club.

Sometimes people come in who are interested in something completely cool, like the elderly gentleman who read The Kite Runner and became fascinated with Afghanistan. So it was always fun to have something waiting for when he'd come in. By the time we'd gone through everything in the collection (and some things that I ordered especially for him) he could probably have taught a university class on the subject. Those are the fun days.

The less fun days are when people come in who hate everything good (read: everything that I love). Because what can I even recommend for them? One patron returned a DVD and was really irritated because not ONLY had the characters been speaking some strange tongue but they'd written the English words on the bottom of the screen. Written! To be read! In a movie! My efforts to defend the foreign language film collection (which could not be more my baby than if I'd given actual physical birth to it) fell upon deaf and hostile ears.

I've figured out how to work with this, though. I think of the books and movies that I love and esteem and would protect with my life. Then I take their exact opposites and hand them over.

"Here's The Ultimate Gift. You'll love it."

Posted in: book lust,library gossip