I have belonged to a genre study group for a year and a half now. I joined the one at IU headed up by Phil Eskew in the summer of 2007 after taking his Readers' Advisory course. Now that I work at a Readers' Services desk I take part in my library's own genre study group that meets, and I'm being honest here, way too early for an awkward librarian to fight the awkward.There is not enough coffee in the world. At this morning's meeting I tried to give an overview of Goodreads, a web 2.0 RA tool that I'm superpassionate about using (please notice the widget, woo! widget!), but I managed to ramble the topic into the ground.
And while Goodreads is awesome, that's not what I'm here to talk about today. I'm here to talk about the book that I realized-in the middle of my genre study discussion- I'm never going to finish it. The book was "Finder" by Emma Bull. But as I was discussing (or again, rambling on about) it as a "book I'm currently reading" this morning, I realized I had nothing exciting or glowing to say about it and though everything on paper about the book seemed to match up with Things I Like In Books and it was recommended via one of the numerous listservs I desperately scramble to fail at keeping up with...I couldn't get into it. Why does it take me so long to realize I won't finish a book, and that I shouldn't have to do so? Do you force yourself to read material you don't actively want to read? Check out the clever poll I devised for you! And riddle me this Batman, how do you RA 2.0 tag those books you just can't finish?
I, too, took Phil's reader's advisory class, but in the summer of '06. :) Small world!
ReplyDeleteAnd although I voted for the answer that made me laugh out loud, the true answer is that I try to give a book 50 pages. Sometimes I'm just picking up a book when I'm not in the mood for it. I'll put it down and try it again later (or not try it again later...). Notable exceptions might be award winners or books that I'm reading to determine where they should go in the library.
And I log the books I've read in my LibraryThing and Good Reads, but I don't tend to log the ones I give up on.