secret shopper

For this assignment, I visited a branch of my county's library system (not the one I work at!), and ended up getting the chance to work with two individuals for my Reader's Advisory journey. Both seemed eager and willing to help, but one staff member, Randall, took the lead, asking me what exactly I was looking for. I told them I had recently realized I enjoyed reading horror, but hadn't read anything without a significant humorous element to it. Both staffers were quick to acknowledge that they weren’t particularly familiar with the genre, instead bringing up their coworker, Megan, who regularly reads books in this vein. While Randall took to trying to remember what books Megan had recently read, the other desk staffer looked through her Libby history to try and remember the title of a book Megan recommended her that she'd loved. This ended up being The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix, which I had heard of and been recommended previously but haven't read. Brandon then tried a different strategy, recommending a book that had been really popular with his many of his colleagues: Max Brooks’ Devolution. He specifically lauded the audiobook, as everyone had enjoyed the full cast narration. From there, he started looking through his own Goodreads shelves, recommending Follow Me to Ground by Sue Rainsford and Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation.

Overall, this experience was kind of a mixed bag. I came away with two titles I am excited to read/listen to (Follow Me to Ground and Devolution) but I couldn't help being a bit disappointed by how one-sided the interaction was. While I could tell both Randall and his colleague wanted to help me, they didn’t actually put much effort into figuring out how to do that. There was no Reader’s Advisory interview at all, and beyond Randall’s initial question (“What are you looking for?”), they didn't ask me a single other question. It was challenging having to battle my own expectations for how I do Reader’s Advisory when the roles are reversed. I kept waiting to be asked for any specific titles I had enjoyed in the past, or if they were on the right track with their recommendations, or anything at all, but mostly it was Randall just thinking of titles he’d read, reading/describing the plots to me, and telling me why he liked them. Aside from Follow Me to Ground, I was familiar with all the titles they presented, which could be considered a positive but mostly left me wanting for lesser-known books or titles that were genuinely new to me. Ultimately, I would probably go back and have them recommend me more titles because they were friendly, easy to talk to, and fairly knowledgeable, but I would hope that they’d ask me more questions to get to what I’m actually looking for and also utilize more RA-based tools.