Incorporating Nonfiction into Readers’ Advisory Services

Barry Trott, Editor
Abby Alpert, Guest Columnist

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The readers’ advisory world has seen a shift in the past several years from focusing exclusively on fiction reading to taking a broader view of recreational reading that includes nonfiction titles and audiobooks as well. This shift is a reflection in large part of the growing interest of readers in narrative nonfiction, as seen in the success of such works as Sebastian Junger’s The Perfect Storm, Dava Sobel’s Longitude, and Anna Pavord’s The Tulip. Librarians are realizing that they can increase their readers’ advisory services and expand their community of readers by applying the same techniques that they have used to find new titles and authors for fiction readers to working with readers of nonfiction.

In this essay, Abby Alpert examines the history of narrative nonfiction; discusses the current state of readers’ advisory services for nonfiction readers, including looking at tools and techniques for working with readers; and makes some recommendations for future directions for this service.

Abby Alpert worked as a readers’ advisor for the Evanston (Illinois) Public Library for nine years. She is a 2005 graduate of the Dominican University Graduate School of Library and Information Science, and is currently working part-time in Readers’ Services and Children’s Services for Evanston. She reviews audiovisual materials for Booklist, and is working on constructing an online readers’ advisory thesaurus. She is also beginning a book on graphic novels.– Editor

Now that the revitalization of traditional fiction readers’ advisory is firmly established, publishing and reading trends require the readers’ advisory community to turn its energy to expanding services to include new formats. These include graphic novels, audiovisual (AV) materials, and works of narrative nonfiction. Increasingly, nonfiction titles are being published, receiving positive critical attention, and becoming popular with the general reader. This has created both the need and the opportunity to develop readers’ advisory services for nonfiction readers. This article will provide an overview of current practices in nonfiction readers’ advisory, focusing primarily on narrative nonfiction, a style of nonfiction writing that adheres to the facts, but employs the literary techniques of fiction to tell a vibrant story about real events, phenomenon, people, and places. The intention is to look at the growth of narrative nonfiction, what is currently happening in nonfiction readers’ advisory, and what needs to happen as narrative nonfiction is incorporated into the realm of readers’ advisory services.

What is Narrative Nonfiction?

To begin with, narrative nonfiction is not a genre itself; rather it is a style that encompasses any nonfiction genre or topic that emphasizes story, including biography, memoir, and essays. Hume proposes that “somewhere between the newspaper on your doorstep and the novel on your nightstand lies narrative nonfiction.”¹ At a conference focused on narrative nonfiction hosted by Columbia University, Yare, senior editor at The Atlantic, defined it as “essentially a hybrid form, a marriage of the art of storytelling and the art of journalism–an attempt to make drama out of the observable world.” He also said it “harnesses the power of facts to the techniques of fiction–constructing a central narrative, setting scenes, depicting multidimensional characters and, most important, telling the story in a compelling voice that the reader will want to hear.”²

There are two elements to consider in looking at this type of writing: the Narrative and the Nonfiction. The narrative requires elements that go beyond merely reporting facts or technical or expository writing. How the story is told is as significant as what happened. The strategies of fiction writing are used to recount the development of an idea, to investigate a phenomenon, or to explore a piece of history. The storytelling element necessitates scene-by-scene construction, drawing characters, finding a moving voice to communicate the drama, and conveying the facts in a way that will draw readers into the story. The Nonfiction element means that the story is based on fact, not on the realm of the imagination. The story is based on actual historical figures, political developments, institutions, objects, events, natural phenomenon, and so on; whatever the subject matter, it must have really happened. Herda aptly notes:

The key word in Narrative Nonfiction is nonfiction. Narratives must be fact. Unlike the Historical Novel that uses a real-life element as a focal point and then is fleshed out with fictional elements and characters, the Narrative Nonfiction tale starts with fact and ends with fact (and, in fact, has fact sandwiched in between).³

Basically, narrative nonfiction uses literary devices of fiction writing to take nonfiction beyond the summarization of a series of facts and into the realm of storytelling.

Why Narrative Nonfiction?

Why focus on readers’ advisory for narrative nonfiction as opposed to nonfiction in general? Saricks has expanded her definition of readers’ advisory in the current edition of Readers’ Advisory Service in the Public Library from “service for adult fiction readers” to “service for adult leisure readers.”⁴ With the increased popularity of narrative nonfiction, book publishers are seeing it as a reliable source of income. Bowker notes in its United States publishing statistics a decline in 2003 of 1.6 percent in output of fiction while nonfiction recorded “double-digit increases.”⁵ Nonfiction is a growing segment of leisure reading. As Burgin states, “many users read nonfiction for pleasure and not to meet specific information needs or to conduct research.”⁶ A 2002 thread in Fiction_L, an active, archived readers’ advisory e-mail list, was devoted to the question of including nonfiction in readers’ advisory; near unanimous agreement resulted in the inclusion of nonfiction materials.⁷

Nonfiction library transactions have traditionally been the sphere of reference or adult services. This was based on the assumption that nonfiction titles are primarily used to gain specific information or for problem solving and are easily located by subject heading and classification number. While nonfiction collections are still composed of large numbers of informational and how-to books focused on the needs of “information people,” there is a growing emphasis on putting out nonfiction for “story people.”⁸ This is where narrative nonfiction comes in, a style of writing that tells a true story as a compelling narrative. It cuts across all categories and appeals to readers for reasons other than solely solving a problem or gaining information on a specific topic. Nonfiction titles that have been consistently popular in the past few years include Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt, The World is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman, The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell, and A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. Current titles that are creating a buzz are River of Doubt by Candice Millard , Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin, and Animals in Translation by Temple Grandin and Catherine Johnson. New titles by key authors in the genre include Michael Pollan’s Omnivore ‘ s Dilemma, Mark Kurlansky’s The Big Oyster, Simon Winchester’s A Crack at the Edge of the World, and Jared Diamond’s Collapse .

Assisting patrons in searching for narrative nonfiction involves different strategies than searching for informational nonfiction. For example, in searching for informational nonfiction about childbirth, an annotated list may help a patron distinguish biases and types of information in various titles within a subject heading. If patrons wanted more titles like those written by attachment-parenting obstetrician Dr. Sears, they would search a subject heading such as natural childbirth to find additional authors such as Kitzinger. It is a fairly objective process, like searching for reference materials, where patrons know what information they are seeking and the classification system directs them to the location of materials that will meet their needs. Finding read-alikes for narrative nonfiction is a subjective skill, like suggesting fiction, and in many cases the patron may not simply want more books on a specific subject with set access points in the catalog, but rather books with similar appeal elements.

The annotations and reviews of informational nonfiction versus narrative nonfiction reflect the distinctions between them. Informational nonfiction reviews evaluate the title using such criteria as thoroughness, currency, accuracy, organization of information, ease in accessing, and indexes. These criteria reflect an emphasis on nonfiction titles that is mainly utilitarian. For narrative nonfiction, the above elements may also be considered, but the emphasis of the reviews and annotations is on expressing whether the book is a “good read.” Does the author meld the facts into an engrossing, fun, or remarkable drama? What are the pacing, point of view, and tone? Are the storyline and characterizations compelling? All these factors–traditional appeal factors that distinguish various fiction titles from each other–are applied to nonfiction, bringing it out of the realm of straightforward information.

The following examples illustrate how readers’ advisors can work with popular narrative nonfiction titles in the readers’ advisory interview process.

• If a patron is looking for another book like Junger’s The Perfect Storm, but not necessarily another book about shipwrecks, there is no way to search for “like” reads. The Perfect Storm crafts the specifics of an actual natural disaster into an absorbing plot with varied themes, rich characterizations, and a blend of historical and scientific details. The appeal to the reader might be in overcoming inconceivable challenges, or the man-against-nature theme, in which case Alfred Lansing’s Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage or Erik Larson’s Isaac’s Storm might be relevant suggestions. The appeal might lie in the suspense, the thriller-like pacing, in which case Jonathan Harr’s A Civil Action might be a good match.
• What if a reader enjoyed Mauve: How One Man Invented a Color that Changed the World by Simon Garfield? A key appeal element of Mauve is putting the creation of a commonplace thing in a larger context, exploring its impact, how “it changed the world.” If the task was purely to find similar subject matter, one might suggest Michel Pastoureau’s Blue: The History of a Color. But just as a fan of Ruth Rendell’s mysteries might discard what superficially appear to be the similar psychological novels of P. D. James, a lover of Mauve might reject Blue as simply a collection of facts about a color, rather than an exploration of the history of an invention and its significance in the bigger picture. Better suggestions for a reader looking for books about small objects that created significant global ripple effects might be Zipper by Robert Friedel, the story of the “hookless fastener,” Nathaniel’s Nutmeg by Giles Milton, or Mark Kurlansky’s Cod .
• Then there is the patron who is looking for read-alikes of James McManus’s Positively Fifth Street, a journalist’s absorbing account of his growing obsession with the world of competitive poker. If the appeal is in the humorous characterizations of fanatical game players or the account of intense competitive quest, Word Freak by Stefan Fatsis, a book about international Scrabble competitions, might fit the bill. If the reader’s interest is in the journalist as an observer and participant or the writer’s experience of becoming passionate about his subject matter, they might find Susan Orleans’s The Orchid Thief a satisfying read.

Just as in an encounter with a fiction reader, suggestions for each of these nonfiction titles could go in multiple directions because the potential appeals are numerous and subjective. Appeal extends beyond subject headings and varies from patron to patron, requiring the application of readers’ advisory strategies to clarify the compelling facets of a book and base relevant reading suggestions on those appeals.

History of Narrative Nonfiction

Narrative nonfiction is relatively new and its history reveals much about the style. One of the most curious elements is that important novelists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries such as Daniel Defoe, Charles Dickens, Henry Fielding, Leo Tolstoy, and William Makepeace Thackeray all used nonfiction to build fictional accounts. Their novels were based on detailed realism about people and events of their day. Beginning in the mid-1900s, fiction moved away from social realism toward the experimental, the imaginary, and the spiritual. Looking at nonfiction bestseller lists, which began in 1912, it is evident that through the 1950s, “most of nonfiction continued to represent an America involved in home, family, and looking good.”⁹ A focus on childrearing, self-help, celebrity books, cookbooks, diet, and etiquette continues, but a new trend began to emerge in the 1960s pioneered by writers including Tom Wolfe, Gay Talese, and Hunter S. Thompson. Called “literary journalism,” “fact writing,” or “the new journalism,” it was a style that used literary technique to endow journalistic reporting with drama and emotional impact.

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