Week 5

 

Assignment 1:

The more I investigate SYKM, the more amazed I am.  I especially like the character and author lists; the author lists link to the author sites, if available.  The indices that are listed in the left column are really helpful to hard-core mystery readers: you can search for books and characters by location/setting, jobs, historical period, diversity, genre, etc.  The Read-Alikes section was a little disappointing at first.  The author section is barely fleshed out but has a disclaimer that the section is being worked on.   The Categories section is more useful and complete, and overlaps the Author section somewhat.

 

Assignment 2:

Towson’s most popular collections are pretty predictable for a large, diverse branch—a mix of bestsellers and literary fiction.  The Early Word site covers all the bases.  My most recent discoveries are the amazing “Categories.”  Under “Consumer Media, Book Coverage,” I found links to all the magazines that regularly cover books, including People and Time.  (My guilty lunchtime reading is no longer justified, I guess.)  I also discovered the whole section of Trailers Based on Books, listed under “Movies and TV.”  I’d rather read a review, myself, but for the visually oriented, I suppose these are necessary; they strike me kind of like MTV did in the 1980s: just listen to the music/read the book, already!  I’ll definitely return to the Early Words site frequently even after this Bookish training ends.  It’s the best aggregator of book stuff I can imagine….

 

Assignment 3:

Eagerly awaited by fans of literary fiction, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, the debut novel by Anthony Marra, is sure to be nominated for several literary prizes in 2013.  This intricately plotted novel takes place in just five days during the second Chechnyan war in 2004 and as the story repeatedly rolls back ten years to the first conflict, surprising relationships between a handful of civilians are revealed.  The writing style is richly detailed, dialogue-rich and stylistically complex, and while the tone is atmospheric and bleak, there is occasional humor that emerges from the pathos of this character-driven story.  Fans of Anil’s Ghost, The Tiger’s Wife, The Orphan Master’s Son, and Everything is Illuminated would be interested in this profound and lyrical war story of love and loss.