Since I work in a public library you may imagine I deal more with steamy pulp mysteries, Mormon vampire "literature" and hot cake chick-lit bestsellers than I do with "good" literature. You would be absolutely right about that. And while I really shouldn't pretend to be any better than those middle-aged housewives who get all glassy-eyed over Robert Pattinson--many of my past reads have been less than great art, after all (ask me about my shameful consumption of fan fiction and Star Trek "novels" sometime...)--I can't help but be a little judgmental.
Still, as part of my job at the library I am expected to provide guidance to our patrons in the form of what we in the library trade call "readers' advisory" service. I'd say 85-90% of the people I talk to in this capacity want to know what I thought about the latest Janet Evonovich mystery or whatever. Readers, I just can't bring myself to crack open those types of books, so I was extremely happy to stumble upon William Boot's new blog over at The Daily Beast wherein he reads these sorts of things for me, and then unloads the skinny in a quick, easily digested essay. I was especially impressed with his description of the new James Patterson phenom, and his observations about Patterson himself are pretty enlightening. As everyone knows, no other author this side of Danielle Steel cranks out more books in a year than Patterson, the fact of which leads one to wonder many things--all summed up nicely by Boot in his blog, which will be helping me immensely in dealing with my advisory shortcomings.
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