Week 3 - Prompt Response

1. I am looking for a book by Laurell K. Hamilton. I just read the third book in the Anita Blake series and I can’t figure out which one comes next!

After finding this series page on Novelist, I can see that the fourth book in the Anita Blake series is "The Lunatic Cafe."

2. What have I read recently? Well, I just finished this great book by Barbara Kingsolver, Prodigal Summer. I really liked the way it was written, you know, the way she used language. I wouldn't mind something a bit faster paced though.

Kingsolver's language is often called "lyrical." If you want to stick with the environmental, "green" theme, you might consider Anthill by Edward Wilson - his writing style is described as lush, lyrical, and richly detailed, but the novel contains elements of suspense which should create a more intensifying pace. If the theme isn't of great importance to you, Love and Ruin by Paula McLain is a romantic historical fiction novel about Ernest Hemingway. The writing style and tone are similar to Prodigal Summer, but it's also considered to be fast-paced. Or, if you want to stay with Kingsolver, her first fiction novel The Bean Trees might not be particularly fast-paced, but the tone and character are more plucky and upbeat which could translate to a quicker feeling read. 

(I found Anthill clicking through the read-alikes page of Novelist, looking for something with keywords that would indicate a faster pace. Love and Ruin was found using the appeal creation search - I set the pace to fast, then checked "richly detailed" and "lyrical" as the writing style modifiers, and then filtered by popular novels. And then The Bean Trees was suggested in Kingsolver's author page on Novelist as a good first read by that author; I found the character and tone keywords to be fitting.)

3. I like reading books set in different countries. I just read one set in China, could you help me find one set in Japan? No, not modern – historical. I like it when the author describes it so much it feels like I was there!

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee is a historical fiction novel about a Korean family who immigrates to Japan in the 1900s - it's an epic, and contains descriptions of life in both countries and across a tumultuous time in Korean and Japanese history. It's very popular, and was recently made into a TV series. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell is about a different time period, and is considered to be a well-researched and intricately detailed look at 1799 Japan. Gail Tsukiyama is a historical fiction author of Chinese and Japanese heritage who publishes novels set in both countries and is praised for her lyrical writing style; I would suggest starting with The Samurai's Garden if you're interested in reading some of her work. 

(I used the Advanced Search function of Novelist - first, a search for the keyword:Japan, then narrowed to Genre:historical fiction, then checked the boxes for Adult and Fiction. From there, I clicked a popular result and followed the read-alike links for a few suggestions with writing style keywords indicating high levels of detail and atmosphere.) 

4. I read this great mystery by Elizabeth George called Well-Schooled in Murder and I loved it. Then my dentist said that if I liked mysteries I would probably like John Sandford, but boy was he creepy I couldn't finish it! Do you have any suggestions?

Well, before I suggest anything else, I wanted to make sure you were aware that Well-Schooled in Murder is actually the fourth book in a series of 21 books - there are plenty more for you to enjoy if you haven't already. For another classic detective-based mystery series, you might enjoy the Lord Peter Wimsey novels by Dorothy Sayers - they're more witty than creepy. If you're really not in a creepy mood, there are "cozy mysteries" that pack all of the suspense and twists but none of the scare. One popular entries there are the Grilled Cheese Mysteries by Linda Reilly. The titles might be funny, but they're well-regarded among mystery lovers. 

(I checked the Novelist page for Well-Schooled, and the page for John Sandford, and tried to find read-alikes for the first that didn't contain too many keywords from Sandford like "gritty" that might make a novel too creepy or dark for our reader. I tried to stick with likeable protagonists as well, since the detective in a mystery series is often a big draw. And, for a more creative suggestion, I browsed through popular and modern cozy mysteries to introduce a decisively un-creepy genre.) 

5. My husband has really gotten into zombies lately. He’s already read The Walking Dead and World War Z, is there anything else you can recommend?

Stephen King is a master of horror, and has an interesting technological take on zombies in his novel Cell. There's also Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion - but, full disclosure, while it does have zombies in it, it's more of a forbidden zombie-human romance than horror. The Living Dead is a collection of zombie-based short stories by a variety of really well-known and well-loved authors; it could help your husband come across a new favorite! I see he already likes The Walking Dead - the writer of that series, Robert Kirkman, actually was recruited by Marvel to do a limited series set in the Marvel universe - so if he's interested in what a zombified Spider-Man might be like, I can recommend that. 

(On Novelist, I navigated to themes > horror > zombie apocalypse and sorted by popularity - I tried to include a few different takes on the subject.) 

6. I love books that get turned into movies, especially literary ones. Can you recommend some? Nothing too old, maybe just those from the last 5 years or so.

A lot of literary fiction gets turned into limited series rather than movies these days - if that still appeals to you, I can suggest Normal People by Sally Rooney, a character-driven novel about rocky relationships - romantic and platonic. Or The Queen's Gambit, a historical fiction novel about a female chess prodigy. 

If it's definitely movies you're looking for, there are still some good options from the last five years. The Song of Names by Norman Lebrect was made into a 2019 movie starring Tim Roth and Clive Owen, and is a historical/literary fiction set in WWII London. Where the Crawdads Sing by Delilah Ownes was one of the biggest books of 2018 and is about to be released as a film; it's a murder mystery, but also a coming-of-age story that switches between two timelines. 

(In the quick links section, I found the list for page-to-screen, scrolled to the bottom, started an advanced search with the page to screen genre and then filtered by 2019-2023 publication date and scrolled through, pausing on titles that seemed like literary fiction.  

7. I love thrillers but I hate foul language and sex scenes. I want something clean and fast paced.

Now, I haven't read these so I can't absolutely promise there won't be any swearing or sexual content, but here are some well-regarded and popular cozy mysteries and clean thrillers. The Murder, She Wrote series by "Jessica Fletcher" and Donald Bain, the Miss Marple Mystery Series  and the Hercule Poirot Mystery Series, both by Agatha Christie are good places to start. The author Mary Higgins Clark writes suspenseful books that could often be considered thrillers, and typically does not include much (if any) sex or swearing. 

(For this one, I went off Novelist and onto Google instead, and found a blog dedicated to cozy mysteries that had a lot of clearly informed suggestions - I ran a few promising ones through Goodreads just to make sure they were rated well enough. I also went back and added a suggestion to question #4 as well.) 

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The way I found new reads as a kid/teen was to physically go to the library and browse the shelves for hours. I do still enjoy doing that sometimes, but I don't have as much time as I did back then. I've also noticed that most libraries keep less on their shelves these days, dedicating more room to technology and shared spaces, and letting patrons browse their collections online instead (which is great - it's what the community needs - but it limits this physical method of exploring the available material). 

As an adult, I usually rely on friends' recommendations, or I use Goodreads. I really like their list function, and enjoy finding slightly obscure or specific themes and delving into top voted examples (e.g. "best banter and bicker couples," "a book with a rabbit on the cover," etc.) 

After looking through Mary Chelton's list, I don't really see my method changing much. However, she did have some lists/"best of" style advisory articles linked that seem to be from credible sources that I'll have to come back to. Usually the lists you find from Googling come across as generic or AI generated and don't offer anything really unique (unless you're willing to slog through to find the good ones.) If I were going into public libraries as a career, I'd definitely sign up for some of the more newsletter and social media style RA resources, but as a corporate librarian who just happens to love to read fiction, that's a bit too much commitment for me. 

One change I will be implementing in my "new book search" strategy is to fully take advantage of Novelist. It's fantastic! I'd never used it before. But it's so helpful to be able to put in a book or author you already know you like, and click away until you find something brand new.