Book Suggestion Sites?

[SewingMom2many]

Are there any sites out there where you can rate books and it will suggest ones you might like? Maybe something like the way Netflix does the movie selections as you rate them. If I look at Amazon it shows me that "customers who bought this also bought" which works well for many things but not so well for series books. My son absolutely loves Henry and Mudge books (suggested by at WTM member :) ) and it just shows me other Henry and Mudge books.

[morosophe]

Have you tried your local library? Ask them if they have a readers' advisory librarian.

 

Our local library has a database called NoveList, by EBSCO, that is supposed to do similar work. Unfortunately, they don't have Henry and Mudge listed.

 

To correct this oversight, it looks the readers' advisory librarian at my local library actually wrote an entry in the blog for people who like Henry and Mudge. (I found it checking Google, though. Kind of strange that it was from my local library!) There's nothing terribly new and exciting on it--she recommends Amelia Bedelia and Frog and Toad, for example--but this is the sort of work that librarians working in readers' advisory do.

 

I hope some of this has helped.

[morosophe]

Something I left out above: If you give Amazon another chance, it may surprise you. Go further down the page than the books you were looking at before, and it will give you "Customers Also Bought Items By," which is a list of other authors instead of other titles. On this page it lists as the big ones (complete with pictures) Marjorie Weinman Sharmat, of Nate the Great fame, and Arnold Lobel. (I guess you just can't get away from Frog and Toad. But why would you want to?)

 

But it also has a whole list of other authors to check out, including Mo Willems, Peggy Parish, and Jane Yolen.

[Jay3fer]

You might try http://www.goodreads.com/ - I just joined and it supposedly "learns" your tastes, then makes recommendations.

That said, I have been reviewing books on Amazon since 1999, and it's pretty accurate. If you get sick of it tossing all one type of book at you, you can disable the one or two books that it's using to make that recommendation.

 

(ps I have only bought 1-2 books at Amazon in all that time - mostly, I use the recommendations to make my library reserve lists - FREE!)

Are there any sites out there where you can rate books and it will suggest ones you might like?

 

There are a couple of sites out there like this. We like http://www.librarything.com, but there is also http://www.goodreads.com . With both of these sites, you can tell them which the books you have read, and it will make recommendations. Library thing has both automatically generated recommendations (which can be hit or miss), and human-generated read alikes. I find it very handy to have a list of all the books each dc has read. Frequently, another parent will ask for a book recommendation, and I won't be able to think of one, but by going back to the list of books each child has read, I'll remember some favorite.

[SewingMom2many]

Thank you so much!! I went to Amazon and scrolled down and sure enough, there were the author suggestions. I guess I didn't look down far enough before.

 

I already have LibraryThing but I've always just used it to keep track of our books. I'm going to check the suggestions.

 

I just made an account on GoodReads specifically for my son to rate books (in fact I might make one for myself as well, it looks fun!). I love how it shows the covers of all the books in the suggestions. This will make it easier for him to choose books before we go to the library. What fun!

 

Thank you for all the suggestions!