Is the Summer Reading program still a time-honored tradition at your library? It's certainly going strong in lots of places, even if the formats, tracking, and incentives have changed. Or maybe your library has evolved to include an even wider variety of summertime programs for your community. Either way, you'll want to make sure that at every event and with every interaction, you're ready with book displays and reading recommendations.
NextReads newsletters can be a huge readers’ advisory timesaver in the busy summer months. The Advance List (which you'll receive three months in advance) to give you a heads up for future publications so that you can prepare programs for exciting new books or while-you-wait recommendations for any big, splashy titles destined for long hold lists. The newsletters themselves serve direct-to-patron recommendations from your library. But they're also a great way to help librarians see what's new as you create reading lists, book displays, and digital content. Many NextReads newsletters offer suggestions for slightly older books as well, so that you can keep backlist collection circulating, too. You might even wind up finding the perfect summer read for yourself!
For example, here's a small sampling of what's coming up this summer:
- This summer, there are three books with enough buzz to appear on two newsletters each: Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah's debut novel, Chain-Gang All-Stars (Fiction A to Z plus Fantasy and Science Fiction); S.A. Cosby's gritty latest, All Sinners Bleed (Thrillers and Suspense plus Mystery), and Guinevere Turner's cult-survival memoir When the World Didn't End (Biography and Memoir plus Spirituality and Religion).
- Legendary manga creator Junji Ito brings visual terror to the Horror newsletter with Tombs.
- Horror also highlights some Bram Stoker Award winners (for all of us who can't attend this year's StokerCon in person).
- For readers who are traveling this summer, the Mystery newsletter offers backlist titles featuring Crime on Vacation.
- Science Fiction and Fantasy boasts new books from seasoned veterans such as Ann Leckie and Connie Willis, alongside new speculative offerings from Eragon author Christopher Paolini and Murderbot author Marta Wells.
- Readers of the Biography and Memoir newsletter with will find new books by notable authors such as Kwame Alexander and Samantha Irby, not to mention celebrities such as Chita Rivera, Tom Brokaw, and Eliot Page.
- Romances from Tessa Bailey, Adriana Herrera, and Cat Sebastian bring a different sort of heat (plus heart) to the summer months.
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Authors experimenting with new audiences include Leah Johnson, with her middle-grade debut, Ellie Engle Saves Herself (Books for Kids and Tweens), and Rebekah Weatherspoon's first YA book, Her Good Side (Teen Scene).
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Young readers can also look for new books by award-winning authors such as Angeline Boulley and Gary D. Schmidt.
And those are just a few drops in the NextReads pool. To dive into the 100+ hand-crafted book recommendations NextReads provides each month, be sure to subscribe, and give your patrons a chance to do the same. There are plenty of ready-made promotional tools in LibraryAware to make marketing this resource a cool summer breeze.
Rebecca Honeycutt is a Senior Readers' Advisory Librarian at NoveList. She is currently reading Franny Choi's Soft Science and listening to Angeline Boulley's Warrior Girl Unearthed.
