Week 1: What you already know

Assignment 1:  The Sporkle website was a lot of fun.  I recognized 14 out of 24 adult and 14 out of 20 children's book covers.  What is always frustrating is not being able to remember the title, but knowing the author.  A few of the covers I was familiar with but could not remember the title or author information.  I really wanted to do a keyword search for them!
Assignment 2: The book cover genre identification exercise was easy for me because I read a lot of genre fiction.  The genre boot camps are also very useful for getting used to the variations in different genres.  I learned about romance and thrillers at genre boot camp a few years ago.  Even so, it can be difficult to find a book to recommend to someone who likes a particular genre author because each author has their own style. Science Fiction can be especially difficult because there are so many facets to Sci fi and fantasy.  In thrillers, I've found that some customers like a very particular type of thriller, and it can be hard to find a similar author to recommend.
Assignment 3:  The golden rules of reader's advisory have some great guidelines for interacting with customers. I tend to freeze up when a customer wants a book recommendation.  The pidgeonhole comments and there is no perfect answer are good to keep in mind.   I am going to try keeping a book log that includes some description.  I hope this will help my recall of books I've read. 
Assignment 4: I was surprised that the recommended links had such differing formats.  Some of them, like the USA Today Happy Ever After, I found very busy and difficult to read.  The busy sites were not hard to use, I just found them a little overwhelming.  I like the NPR website, so I'm going to follow that one.  For the genre website, I am going with Street Fiction, since I don't read much urban or black fiction.  I was familiar with some of the other genre websites, and I will keep up with a few of them also, just for fun.
Assignment 5: The book covers described by the six year old  really brought out to me how the interpretation of a cover depends on each person's experience.  A librarian can't count on anyone else looking at a book cover from the same viewpoint.  Picking a book up on the basis of the cover is only the first step.  If I do not know anything about a book, the book summary will be more useful in matching a book to a reader.