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Judge a bookstore by its front tables
Reading the store
Bookstores decide what they stock, so they carry what they think will sell or what they think is good or interesting for their community. Books turned face out on the shelves are another hand-picked signal. The rest of the walkabout is looking around to see what jumps out.
Asking a bookseller
Booksellers and librarians are matchmakers for readers. Three books that were loved, one that was hated, and a mood such as a long drive on Christmas Eve give them enough to go on, and they always come up with something.
Permission to quit
With no summer reading list and no grade, a book only has to be one a reader wants to read. If a particular book keeps causing distraction, eye-rolling, or sleep, it can be put down. There are too many books in the world to read ones that aren't liked, and that is called cultivating taste.
Why do bookstores face some books cover out?
A book shown face out takes the shelf space that several spine-out books would use, so a store gives up room for each one it faces. The front cover is designed to sell the book, while a spine usually carries only a title and an author. Stores save facing for titles they want to push, along with new releases. A spine-out shelf holds many more titles in the same space.
How do librarians match readers to books?
Library science calls this readers' advisory. Joyce Saricks and Nancy Brown wrote a standard text on it, Readers' Advisory Service in the Public Library, in 1989. It teaches librarians to ask what appealed to a reader in past books, such as the pacing, the characters, and the tone, rather than only the genre. Saricks later called these elements of appeal doorways into a book.
Why do schools worry about summer reading?
A 1996 review in the Review of Educational Research by Harris Cooper and colleagues pooled 39 earlier studies of what happens to achievement over summer break. On average, students scored about one month lower on tests at the end of summer than at the start. The finding helped launch decades of research on what researchers call the summer slide.
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