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
- his 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.
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