Militant Recommender

I take home the Library Review journals every week and read through them to put in book orders. I put in for a LOT of books over the years. Lots of great reviews but the trick is to convince patrons to try new authors so I am constantly recommending. When you know a patron pretty well...you'll know what books to recommend to them. It's a fine art, getting people to try your favorite titles so they won't just sit there on the shelf with just their spines showing susceptible to weeding. I have a special shelf where I put my real favorites and then the Adult Floor staff have two small bookshelves on a table with a mix of all our favorites. Many patrons go right to these areas and it always makes you happy to see those titles get a chance to go out there and entertain someone new! I just did this new Cafepress design based on all this:

Click here to see all the gifty things with this design!

Now, I'll list 18 of my most frequent recommendations below:
1. June Bug by Chris Fabry
2. Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen
3.The Year of Fog by Michelle Richmond
4. My Abandonment by Peter Rock
5. The Bride's Farewell by Meg Rosoff
6. The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by  Jacqueline Kelly
7. Book of Bright Ideas by Sandra Kring
8. Miss Harper Can Do It by Jane Berentsen
9. Virgin of Small Plains by Nancy Pickard
10. The Vanishing of Katharina Linden by Helen Grant (I wrote about her "Glass Demon in my previous post, so I'm recommending that, now, too!)
11.Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley
12. In Zanesville by Jo Ann Beard
13. The End of Everything by Megan Abbott
14.  A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes
15. The Summer Book by Tove Janssen
16. Selected Work of T.S. Spivet by Reif Larsen
17. The Child Garden by Geoff Ryman.
18. In the Woods by Tana French
Gad, I could just keep going with these!
These are not counting series I recommend like the Hunger Games and the Forest of Hands and Teeth and Louise Rennisen's Georgia books. All terrific!
I am also loving "The Night Circus" by Erin Morgenstern, which is brand new and magical. I like different takes on circuses and carnivals like "Something Wicked This Way Comes" by Ray Bradbury and "The Circus of the Earth and of the Air" by Brooke Stevens.
Not to mention that this is Banned Book Week. Lots of recommendations, there, but you can find those lists all over.  So, happy reading, everyone!