The Simpletons Book Blog

Author: Jessica Goodman Title: The Counselors Genre: Young Adult Publication Date: May 31, 2022 Number of Pages: 368 Geographical Setting: Rural, wooded area, Roxwood town, Camp Alpine Lake Time Period: Current day and year, 2020s, summertime Series (If applicable): N/A Plot Summary: Living in Roxwood in the middle of nowhere is our main character, Goldie Easton. Having suffered from some consequences during the school year, she looks forward to seeing her friends Ava and Imogen coming into town and working together as counselors at the local bougie camp, Camp Alpine Lake. Ready to take the summer by storm, they prepare for the campers' arrival, only for the death of a local at the camp to spook all the staff. With so many secrets being held by everyone that she knows, Goldie goes out looking for answers, and she is going to find some secrets that she didn’t wish she had found, along with almost sharing secrets that she never wished to. Subject Headings: Young A...

For libraries, we should always be promoting all kinds of books and materials to patrons because we want to encourage patrons to read and use the library in all the ways that libraries provide for them. Everyone has preferences to what they want to read to do in their free time, and we should not put them down or make them feel bad for enjoying what they like. The library supporting readers who like graphic novels is certainly more important then not since it encourages those readers to keep reading books that they like, and it encourages them to continue to visit the library in the future. With encouragement, they may be able to create a group for people to visit and read graphic novels together and share their favorites with each other, which helps to create lifelong connections with other people. The same can be said about young adult books. If we create a space that welcomes all different kinds of readers, we can have more diverse groups of people who visit the library regularly an...

  Author: Carissa Broadbent Title: Daughter of No Worlds Genre: Fantasy Publication Date: January 8, 2020 Number of Pages: 518 Geographical Setting: Time Period: Series (If applicable): The War of Lost Hearts Plot Summary: Tisaanah, a girl forcibly removed from her home at a young age in the middle of the night, and forced into slavery, wants to help those that she had been taken from. All she wants to do is free them with the help of the Order, being that they are a highly powerful organization of magic wielders. Maxantarius Farlione wants nothing to do with her but is forced to take her on. With the dynamic between two opposing forces, we see how each grows and pushes each other to their limits. Subject Headings: Fantasy Fiction, Slavery, Magic, Women Heroes Appeal: Story Line – This story goes into such depth that helps build the characterization of the characters well and makes it clear how they have come to have their motivations throughout the book. Bui...

For my special topics paper, I decided to do a deep dive into romance throughout history to get a better understanding of where the romance genre has been, where we are now, and how we got from then to now. I mostly wanted to stay within a certain range and thought it best not to go too far, so I decided to go only so far as the 1900s for my research. Here's a bit of an idea of where we went from the 1900s to now. In the 1920s, we had a surge of regency books, where Jane Austin made a comeback 100 years after her stories, but that didn't have as much detail about the time period since they were written during that period, but we had several other authors who wrote books with more details about that time period in their writing. We also had romance books covering some scandalous topics, such as premarital consummation and abortions. Moving into the 1950s and 1960s, we started to see many romance books portraying financially responsible women who have jobs and want a compassionat...

Author: Douglas Adams Title: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Genre: Science Fiction Publication Date: October 12, 1979 Number of Pages: 224 Geographical Setting: England, Space Time Period: 2000’s, considered the future from the year written Series (If applicable): The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Plot Summary: All Arthur Dent wanted to do was to keep his house from being destroyed for a bypass, and suddenly things started to change and become super weird all around him. At least he has his good friend Ford Prefect to keep him company during this whole mess. With the start of Arthur’s amazing adventure, we learn so much about the universe, and that is all thanks to the book that Ford keeps on him, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Subject Headings: Science fiction, Humor, Fantasy, Comedy Appeal: Language/Style – The story has lots of witty banter between characters, as well as many humorous turns of phrase, meant to make the reader chuckle when rea...

Author: Ali Hazelwood Title: The Love Hypothesis Genre: Romance Publication Date: September 14, 2021 Number of Pages: 384 Geographical Setting: Stanford California and Boston, Massachusetts Time Period: Current time period, in the present Series (If applicable): The Love Hypothesis Plot Summary: Olive Smith is in her graduate Ph.D. program at Stanford and happens to be someone who wants what’s best for her friend, going so far as to say that she is on a date so that her best friend, Anh, can get together with Jeremy, who Olive went on a few dates with. The problem is that Anh just so happens to be at the lab when Olive is pretending to be on a date, so what is her solution? Kissing the first person she sees. And who happens to be said person? Dr. Adam Carlsen, who is notoriously known for being a tough person. Now in this predicament, there is only one solution that can save them both. They must continue the ruse and pretend to date. Subject Headings: Biologists, Sc...

One way that I regularly see as an idea is a blind date with a book, and this is commonly done with Romance books. I would love to flip the script and do a blind attack from a Horror book. This would give those who like the Horror genre something new, while also getting into books that they like. I would make sure to include blurbs on the book to help decide what book patrons would love to take home, but I would also keep a sheet with each blurb along with the title so that if someone wanted more details for a specific book, I would not have a problem getting them a little bit more about the book in general. This program would be a bit more passive for those who are just looking, but it would also have some sort of display to go with it just to bring it to the attention of the other readers. As for advisory, we could help others find a book that they may like in the display, as well as come up with new ideas to add to the display once some have been checked out. It would be a rotatin...

Author: Freida McFadden Title: Never Lie Genre: Thriller Publication Date: September 19, 2022 Number of Pages: 336 Pages Geographical Setting: Rural house, in New York State Time Period: Current time period, 21 st century Series (If applicable): N/A Plot Summary:  A young woman, Tricia, and her husband, Ethan, are going to a house outside of Manhattan to check it out and see if they want to purchase it. They arrive in a blizzard and are stuck due to all the snow build-up. This leads them to figure out what they plan to do while they wait for the blizzard to stop and for someone to clear out the snow. With no cell phone reception and no wifi, Tricia starts looking for something to do, and this starts us on our journey to figuring out what happened in this house that used to be owned by the renowned Dr. Adrienne Hale and leads us down a path that we least expected. With this, we learn of a secret room with cassette tapes, and a story that unfolds that we could never expect to take u...

For me, reading has always been something that I enjoyed. I have always loved traveling to other worlds and experiencing that world with the characters as they traveled their path. Although I have loved reading, I am someone who reads extremely slowly. I was also one of the students who had to do remedial reading programs through my school to catch up to my peers' reading levels, although that never stopped me from enjoying such. I have more recently been reading mostly in the form of audiobooks since they tend to be faster listening to the books than reading the physical pages, but I will always enjoy reading the physical pages as well. The favorites that I love to read involve fantasy and romance a lot. They are my go-to genre of choice, and experiencing life through those lenses has always made me so happy. I also tend to read mainly from the young adult section, so hopping into the adult section is a little weird for me, but not completely off course. I have more recently branc...