Let New York Librarians Choose Your Next Read

 Have you ever dreamed of a concierge service where a librarian working for a big city's library would send you personalized recommendations for your next read?

I never knew such a thing existed, but there is such a thing.  It is available both by email and (during certain designated days and hours) on  FacebookTwitter.  Best of all, it is run by the library that nourished me in my growing up years - the New York Public Library. They call themselves the Readers Services Team.

I've blogged before about how, growing up, I wanted to work in a library.   More specifically, I wanted to work in a New York Public Library bookmobile.  After the city housing project I lived in lost its branch library (yes, we had a branch library in our housing project!) somewhere around 1959 or so, we gained a bookmobile which stopped by every Thursday during the school year.

I loved coming home from elementary school and climbing up the short flight of stairs and into a world of magic.  I don't know how many books that bookmobile held, but I always managed to find something there to read.

Now, during the pandemic, as a New York State resident, I am once able (on a limited basis) to use the NYPL's resources .  But anyone (yes, anyone) can use the online Readers Recommendations.

I tried it yesterday and it works.  

If you want to do this, there are several ways.

1.  By email on a web form - using this link.

It will ask you what you are in the mood to read and it will ask you for a book or author you've enjoyed reading.  It will also ask you  if you are asking for an adult, child, or teen.

2.  By Facebook: following the NYPL; there is a live feed Wednesdays at 12:30 pm.

3.  On Twitter.  You don't have to follow NYPLRecommends .  The times are Mondays from 3pm to 4pm Eastern Time and Fridays from 10am to 11am (Eastern time). Tweet them (reply to the link they would have set up for that day's session.)

So, my experience.

Yesterday I went on Twitter around 10:30 am.  I had never hit the "magic hours" before but I saw their tweet indicating they were open for recommendation requests, so I tweeted them that I enjoyed dystopian literature and loved a book "Station 11" by Emily St. John Mandel and a YA series called The Razorland series.  Within minutes, I had five recommendations and they were good ones:

The Country of Ice Cream Star by Sandra Newman - I can see why this was the first recommendation. There has been a plague and everyone gets it as they approach their late teens.  Everyone dies from it,  most painfully.  So civilization (such as it is) is being carried on by teens before they get sick and die.  

Our heroine is an African-American teen whose older brother, the head of their band, is dying from the plague. So off she goes into this strange future world (and is it ever strange), trying to find a cure.

For me, this 600 plus page book was a DNF but not because it was terrible. In fact, I found it to be quite imaginative.  In another day and time (I read it, perhaps four years ago?) I may have had the patience to wade through its invented dialects and its just general try to figure it all out.

If I had only discovered it now, in the time of COVID-19 - who knows?

It was a very good first recommendation.

The other recommendations?  They gave me a total of five.  I had read part of one (just never got back to it, but it was very well written), had heard of the third but not investigated it yet, and both of the remaining two sounded interesting.  I chose one to check out of the NYPL as an ebook. 

So, in other words - they nailed it.  I'm reading it now. Maybe I'll even review it for you.  Let's just say it involves another plague...

Maybe they will nail it for you, too.

Have you ever used this service?