BMB Week 8: Nonfiction

I love nonfiction! Whether narrative or how-to, nonfiction is my favorite genre to read. And to recommend. There's lots of info goodness in our nonfic stacks!

Assignment 1

These two articles made me think more critically about the way I recommend books to customers, and about the way I read them myself. In my readers advisory work, I'm going to attempt to cross over the fict/nonfic delineation more often, because it's nice to offer our customers that option. It might even be easier to recommend nonfiction to a customer who reads a lot of fiction because nonfiction is subdivided so finely. Some customers, of course, won't be receptive to this, but I still think it's important to try to make those connections across our entire collection.

Assignment 2

This video was really informative, though a little bit dry. While I new there were a lot of genres of narrative nonfiction, it was impressive to see 16 of them listed out, and my mind immediately started trying to think of books that I know about in each of the genres. The mention of "lack of appeal" factors was smart, although I've found it extremely difficult to screen for these factors in Novelist and the like. I'd probably run my recommendation through commonsensemedia.org if I had time during the RA interview.

Assignment 3

Narrative crime nonfiction is mostly found in the 364s. In this section, I would recommend Bringing Adam Home by Les Standiford, about the abduction of John Walsh's (of America's Most Wanted fame) son.

Disaster/survival is all around the nonfiction collections depending on the type of disaster. Krakauer's Into Thin Air is in the 760s with mountaineering, while Piers Paul Reed's Alive is in the 982s with history and the Andes region. I've found, for this genre, that searching by subject is a lot more effective than looking around in the Dewey area.

Medical narrative nonfiction is found with health books in the 616s. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot is a popular book in this genre.

Adventure or military nonfiction, depending on the time period, is found in the 900s. Popular titles like Black Hawk Down by Mark Bowden and No Easy Day by Mark Owen are found around the 960s.

Assignment 4

More on this later.