Reader's Advisory

So when they say there is a weather advisory that always means there may be bad weather coming. They don't say "Weather Advisory: 70 degrees, low winds, and sunny." And when they have a travel advisory it is to tell you about something that may mess up your travel plans. So in my wife's library world they have what they call "reader's advisory" and every time I hear the phrase my instinct is to assume they must be talking about how to warn people about bad books. Now of course this might mean warning about scandalous material, but maybe also poor character development, contrived endings, and other things you might want to warn someone about in a book. Of course I have also known for years that this reaction of mine is wrong. In their world "readers advisory" just means making recommendations to people about what to read. Knowing this, however, doesn't keep me from thinking the other every time I hear the phrase. Of course as an academic, I am the last person to have grounds for complaint that people use jargon that the rest of us are confused by.