Readers Advisory


With so many books out there, how to choose what to read? Help is there via the Internet, at a variety of sites that do the same thing, but in surprisingly different ways.

Book Browse

With the tag line “Don’t judge a book by its cover, read it for yourself at Book Browse,” this site provides excerpts from popular and current books, plus summaries, reviews and author biographies.

Book Browser

Not to be confused with Book Browse (above) BookBrowser offers fiction reading lists, book reviews, forthcoming titles, author information, and a chat community. Sections such as If You Like...Try, award-winning titles, Mysteries By Region, Hot Titles, Store Browser, Authors Online, Author Interviews and Reader's Resources make this a valuable site for librarians and patrons alike. The site is maintained by two librarians, which may be why it is so well organized and easy to use.

The Booklist Center

Contains 262 book lists in 63 categories - fiction and nonfiction, scholarly and popular - and no advertising.

The Fiction_L List of Lists

Running out of ideas for bookmarks or suggestions for your book discussion group? This site has some truly creative lists among the many it offers. Some intriguing categories - Older Women, Younger Men, YA Novels Where Family is NOT the Problem, Nonfiction that Reads Like Fiction, and the ghoulish, Traffic in Human Organs.

Overbooked Reviews and Reading Lists

Although these links are for the most part, not annotated, it is a fairly comprehensive list. There are sections on bestsellers, book reviews, literary magazines, and top ten lists. It even has a list of fiction with a quilting theme. Of all the sites out there that make lists of lists, this is probably the best of the lot.

Rating Zone

This interactive site claims to accurately predict which books, movies and music the user will like, based on an online ratings questionnaire. There is no fee, but registration by individual user is required.

The Reader’s Advisor

Another site maintained by a librarian so it is nicely organized and updated regularly. Both fiction and non-fiction are categorized; fiction into the usual genres, non-fiction into whimsical themes such as Touched by Angels and The History of Stuff.

Which Book

This site has a series of rating scales such as No Sex/Sex, Short/Long, Romantic/Realist. You choose the degree of each characteristic you’d like the book to have. The resulting recommendations are nicely annotated. Be sure to watch the icons morph as you use the sliding scales.