Saturday, May 11

The most important thing that I learned from the "Conversations" assignment with the three customer requests was that you can search Novelist for appeal factors.  This was new to me.  If readers reveal appeal factors in the books they prefer, or even just mention a title they liked, we can search by these factors and find just the right book for the right mood, every time.  No more searching your brain for the one title you think is appropriate, but actually may not be.

Conversation 1
The customer chose Eat Play Love because it was popular, but ended up liking it for the location and the reflective tone.  She revealed that she liked the Oprah books too, most likely for their tone as well.  I would recommend Three Cups of Tea for its impassioned and thought-provoking tone, even though it is not a novel. Another one that comes pretty close to fulfilling what the customer wants would be Tales of a Female Nomad, an author's journey across the globe in search of her personal identity in the wake of a failed marriage and her peripatetic lifestyle in the fifteen years that followed.

Conversation 2
In this scenario, the customer is very sure of what she doesn't like in a vampire story.  With the help of the Boolean appeal factors search in Novelist, I would suggest several humorous ones as well as poignant ones that are not for teens and are devoid of romance.  A fast-paced, funny and steamy novel, Undead and Unemployed features Betsy Taylor, the new Queen of the Vampires, who gets a job selling designer footwear at Macy's while trying to catch a vicious vampire slayer with the help of a gorgeous ally.  For a more contemplative mood, suggest Fledgeling, a story of a young, amnesiac girl whose un-human needs and abilities lead her to a startling conclusion: she is in fact a genetically modified, 53-year-old vampire. Forced to discover what she can about her stolen former life, she must also learn who wants to destroy her and how she can save herself.

Conversation 3
This customer wants a true story, historical, fast-paced, perhaps a story about wilderness survival, with or without a president but maybe someone famous.  Lots of accounts of the Shackleton expedition came to mind, but after some digging I also found Panama Fever, the epic history of one of the greatest engineering triumphs of all time: the building of the Panama Canal.   This book describs the human cost in terms of the harsh working conditions and epidemics, and the resulting medical breakthroughs that would transform medicine. The canal, commissioned by Teddy Roosevelt (the subject of the customer's last book read) is the main character in this well-researched and satisfying account of imperial vision and social inequity.