Here’s another TMI — this time with Library Journal’s Librarian of the Year, Nancy Pearl (@Nancy_Pearl). She met up with me at the University Bookstore in Seattle, Wa. to give us her thoughts about the importance of booktalking in libraries. Have a listen!

TMI – Nancy Pearl by heidifk

Want more booktalking tips? What other tips would YOU suggest?

Booktalking for Adult Audiences – RUSQ

Teens: Too Old for Book Talks? – School Library Journal

Booktalks – Quick and Simple

Here’s an example of a booktalk I gave for Nancy Pearl’s Adult Readers’ Advisory class last spring:

Iron Lake by William Kent Krueger is the first book in a mystery series set in northern Minnesota. The series follows Cork O’Connor, a curious ex-sheriff, who, as can be expected, seems to always find himself in the wrong place at the wrong time.

But that’s where this series is different. The title of each book in the series is a place – and that place is so amazingly developed throughout the book that it becomes a character.

In the first book of the series, Iron Lake, you’ll get to know Cork. He’s been living on Iron Lake since he’s been separated from his wife. And while Cork thinks he knows all of the lake’s secrets, he finds himself drowning in new, confusing information after the town’s judge is murdered.

This quick-paced novel captures the human’s desire to find answers even when man and nature fight back. Each page washes up new secrets that the reader and Cork wade through together – to discover the truth.

Every autumn, William Kent Krueger releases a new book about Cork and his small community. My mom and I have a tradition. We buy a copy and share it. Before I moved out here, my mom bought me my own copy of Iron Lake. It is our favorite of the series.

Philip Reed, author of Low Rider, says this about the book, “Iron Lake is that rare combination: a page turner and a deeply felt character study.” That’s Iron Lake by William Kent Krueger.