Last Chance Fiction

The shelves of the Watertown Free Public Library, while extensive, are not infinite.  As we continually purchase new materials for the residents of Watertown, we must provide room for them through ongoing collection maintenance. This summer our librarians found several titles that we believed deserved a second chance at attracting readers.  

We noticed quite a few books that had circulated very well when they were brand new, but had not been checked out at all in 2, 3, or even 5 years! We realize that when books are brand new, we display them prominently, and draw attention to them. Once these books had gone to the general fiction stacks, they languished.  Some other books had never circulated well here in Watertown, but had received widespread, glowing reviews or won major awards. We decided that some of these books deserved to be in the spotlight one more time. Thus, our “Last Chance Display” was born.

We’ve been featuring these books for several months now, and some of them have really captured our patrons’ attention! Quite a few of them have been checked out 7 or 8 times in the last few months. The titles which circulated the most since the display went up are:

Isabel’s Daughter by Judith Ryan Hendricks
Our Napoleon in Rags by Kirby Gann
O My Darling by Amity Gaige
The Successor by Ismail Kadare
Troubled Midnight by John Gardner
Slipstream by Leslie Larson
Brotherhood of the Holy Shroud by Julia Navarro
Category 7 by Bill Evans
Death by Chick Lit by Lynn Harris
Sandrine’s Letter to Tomorrow by Dedra Johnson

We also invited patrons who liked one of these books to recommend them to others. The titles which received recommendations were:

Nightingales of Troy by Alice Fulton
Smoke by Tony Broadbent
Animal Girl by John Fulton

Stop by the display under the H.H. Hunnewell portrait behind the reference desk.  Take out a few titles and recommend your favorites to the librarians. You’ll give some good fiction a second chance.