Blind Date With a Book...

           If you visit the Tecumseh library in the month of February, you'll notice a display of books, in plain brown paper wrappings. There are no titles or authors listed on the wrappers, just a teaser that alludes to what the book is about.   We've wrapped these books up tight with some paper from the dollar store so there’s no peeking to see what book is inside these anonymous packages. What are these books? Are they books so bad that we’re looking for a way to trick people into checking them out? Are they titles so scandalous that we  have covered them, for your benefit, lest someone sees you with one? No, not at all. These are books we think you’ll fall in love with, if you just give them a chance. 

     With Valentine’s Day fast approaching, we are playing matchmaker for library patrons. We are fixing them up with some of our favorite books and sending them on a Blind Date with a Book.  Patrons take a chance and check out a book we have selected, without knowing exactly what that book is until they get it home. We’re hoping we can introduce them to a book they will love, but may not have picked up on their own.

     Blind Date with a Book is an idea that I saw on Pinterest and I decided I wanted to try it out. Last snowy Sunday was the perfect day to do so! It was fun to come up with "personal ads" to pique readers’ interest in a book. We used brown Kraft paper to wrap up the books (then carefully cut out the area that covered the bar code on the back so that we could scan them out). Because the books are made anonymous in plain brown wrappings, we decorated the outside with words and heart stickers in hopes of tempting patrons to take a chance and read something new and unknown. Blind Date with a Book is an exercise in, truly, not judging a book by its cover!

     The selected books include titles that are staff favourites, but are not necessarily "popular" fiction. We tried to choose books that would appeal to both men and women and we were vague yet intriguing with the hints we added to the book wrappers. We hope this idea will catch on and that our patrons will have fun with it. As books are checked out, we will be adding to the selection of eligible (and available) books. 

Happy Reading!