The Northeastern Readers' Advisory Round Table studies STYLE APPEAL: Nancy Pearl's Doorways

(Note: All NE M RA RT discussions will be Virtual Zoom meetings sponsored by a member library. Members will recieve a link to sign-up via our Google Group, anyone else who is interested should email Leane at rapotential@gmail.com)

Our next topic begins our year of studying specific Appeal categories through Nancy Pearl’s Doorways. We began with Character in January 2023, Tone in March, Pace in May, followed by Frame in September. We are concluding with Style (11/28/23) in November.

Assignment For the benchmark, everyone reads Amal El-Mohtar’s & Max Gladstone’s This is How You Lose the Time War (2019).

Leane has posted PDFs of Sarick’s chapter on “Articulating a Book’s Appeal“(p.40-73; Especially STORY LINE 55—58 .) on Google Group, please read this before you read the Benchmark or your Choice Title. Please note that STYLE contains some knowledge of all the previously studied Doorways: CH, TONE, PACE, and FRAME which we studied in the past year and will revisit in this discussion.  You need not have been at the previous meetings to benefit from this discussion.

Also, please read a Choice Title. See our blog for suggested paths to choosing your Choice Style Title, and then write a review on our blog under Submit Choice Titles.   

See NE RA RT BLOG for more information and list of Resources.

Meeting every other month, the NE RA RT reads from one genre--and then discusses the appeal of that genre with each other emphasizing the building of a skill set of appeal categories and familiarity of genre particulars. They cover a different genre/topic every meeting, allowing each of the participants to be introduced to the discipline of reading for appeal, as well as an initiation to broad genre categories. Everyone participating will be able to share analysis of titles and authors in unfamiliar genres that will stretch their capacity as readers' advisors.  The discussion leader is Leane Ellis (rapotential@gmail.com).