I was looking for some new resources for reader's advisory, because I'm trying to become better at it, and ran across two online tools that look interesting, and could potentially be useful in an RA conversation.
WhichBook is a recommender website where you can get suggestions based on mood. So, if your customer is in the mood for a certain kind of book, you can use sliders to select up to four characteristics on a gradient, like the generic "Happy > Sad" or "Beautiful > Disgusting" or "Gentle > Violent". However, it looks like the recommended books are primarily UK-focused, so I hope that their library of suggestions will grow.
This is a pretty interesting site for recommendations. You choose a book, and the site generates a spiderweb of eight similar titles. Their transparency is lacking though,because there are no appeal factors listed, so you can't tell how exactly the titles were matched or where the recommendations come from (I'm guessing they scrape Amazon for titles and reviews, since there is some prominent advertising for Amazon).
- There is also a really great feature called MyMap, where you can create a "map" of your reading, linking books so they are laid out graphically.
And one that I would enjoy using (and may have to create myself)
I would love to see a website or tool that would compare two books based on their appeal factors, and then make recommendations based on the similarities as well as the differences between the two. For example, if someone had read Fifty Shades of Grey and Twilight and wanted readalikes, I could tell them a couple for 50 Shades and a couple for Twilight, but is there Paranormal BDSM Romance out there that I don't know about? (edit:
Goodreads says there are...yikes! )I think this kind of comparison tool or website would be quite popular.
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