Citizen Reader

Yesterday I reviewed Rick Roche's reading guide Real Lives Revealed (about biographies), and anyone who's had to sit through my painful self-promotion on this blog is aware that I've written two nonfiction reading guides, titled The Real Story (about nonfiction in general) and The Inside Scoop (about investigative and expose writing, such as that of William Langewiesche). When it is published I also hope to review Jessica Zellers's Women's Nonfiction guide. All of these books,* thus far, have shared a common series editor: Robert Burgin, a professor at North Carolina Central University's library school and editor of the titles Nonfiction Readers' Advisory and The Reader's Advisor's Companion.

I thought Robert was a fabulous series editor, which now scares me a bit, because with his recent retirement, I've been offered the opportunity to be the Real Stories series editor. Which is really cool. But also scary, because I have some big shoes to fill.

But there's no time like the present, right? Have you ever dreamed of writing a nonfiction reading guide? Do you know someone who has? It's helpful if you have library experience, as these books are written primarily to help library staff (and I mean all staff--I know that a lot of people on the front lines on libraries aren't necessarily "librarians"), but I don't know that it's absolutely necessary. If you have any interest, or questions about these books, please do write me at [email protected]. The more the merrier! Alternatively, if you'd like to see what's involved before emailing, do check out Libraries Unlimited's proposal guidelines.

*If you're more familiar with the Genreflecting guides, written for fiction, these are very similar, except they cover nonfiction.