Good online sources for figuring out what to read

[Maria]

Recommend and find out about reader's advisory websites besides Goodreads!

Stop, You're Killing Me!
www.stopyourekillingme.com
This is an amazingly well-organized mystery/suspense genre site. It has indexes where you can search for books by all sorts of characteristics, plus very specific readalikes.

Cozy Mystery List
http://www.cozy-mystery.com/
Like Stop, You're Killing Me! but just for cozies. This site is kind of ugly, but I love it because it turned me on to the Aurora Teagarden series, starting withReal Murders, by Charlaine Harris, which I never would have picked up otherwise since I hated the series that became True Blood. It has a TV and movie adaptation section too.

[Kate]

I listen to several really good book podcasts:

Books on the Nightstand
This is done by two Random House sales reps in their free time (so not an official Random House podcast). They are both very knowledgeable and read very widely. In each episode they discuss book news, a book-related topic, and give new release recommendations.

Bookrageous
The three hosts of this podcast are book store employees and book bloggers. Between the three of them, they also read very widely. Their tagline, "We're serious about books, but not always serious", pretty well sums up the spirit of their discussions. Most episodes are centered around a theme and their current reading, but they also do "Book Club" episodes centered around one specific book.

The Readers
This one is done by two book reviewers in the UK, so they sometimes have a different perspective on books and publishing. Right now, they're doing a Summer Reading series where each week they discuss a specific book and interview the author.

New York Times Book Review
A great companion to the print NYT Book Review, this podcast includes author interviews, reviews, book news and insights into the bestseller list.

[Maria]

Thanks for those, Kate. I'm going to have to try the first three on your list because I've been listening to the NYT book review for a while now, and I'm starting to get really annoyed by the host. It seems like every week he either makes fun of e-books or women novelists! Is there one of the first three that you like best?

[Kate]

Yeah, I haven't been listening to NYT as much lately either. I would say Books on the Nightstand is the most polished of the other three. Bookrageous and The Readers can be really funny, but the hosts can also ramble on a bit and go off on tangents.

[Lizzie]

I'm catching up on a many months back log of NYT Book Review podcasts. I guess I'm not at the point where Sam Tanenhaus does either of those things.

[Maria]

Lizzie- it was one of those things that once I noticed I couldn't stop noticing it. That said, I'm pretty freakishly sensitive about literary elitism so it might not bug a different person at all!

[Elsbeth]

I recently heard of this one, but haven't used it yet.

http://idreambooks.com/

[Carrie]

I like the NPR books site: http://www.npr.org/books/. They also have a Book Notes newsletter that I like.

I also follow the Seattle Public Library's Shelf Talk blog: http://shelftalk.spl.org/, The Guardian's Books Blog: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/books..., and Quirky Girls Read: http://quirkygirlsread.com/.

Finally, if you like graphic novels, I recommend Graphic Novel Reporter: http://graphicnovelreporter.com/.

I always looking for more recommendations of book blogs/online sources, so I love this discussion!

[Elsbeth]

Oh, I didn't even think of NPR! I use that all the time for book reviews too.

I probably read about 1/3 of the books I hear about on Fresh Air. Terry Gross just has a way of making things sound interesting to me and I'm rarely disappointed!

[Maria]

Thanks Carrie and Elsbeth! idreambooks shares a concept with my old favorite site www.reviewsofbooks.com, but with a much, much nicer interface

[Maria]

Whichbook lets you search for books based on traditional factors such as plot, setting, and characters, or less common ones such as "no sex or lots of sex" and "larger than life or down to earth": http://www.openingthebook.com/whichbo... It's really fun! I've been playing around with the sliding scales to see what comes up.

[Tony]

There also resources such as Novelist and Books and Authors you can access through the library's website here: http://www.dclibrary.org/books-movies...

[Kate]

Shelf Awareness puts out two newsletters, one for readers and one for people in bookish professions, that have a lot of good content. They review books, interview authors, link to fun book lists all over the internet, give publishing industry news and more.

[Patricia]

Novelist K-8 is great! I just discovered it and have found many great sources for children's programming. I love that I can read the reviews and that it lists which age group the book is intended for. It makes organizing programs for children much easier! Thanks for the great source :)

[Maria]

Sam Tanenhaus has a correspondent explain to him what Goodreads is on this week's NYT's podcast. It is amusing AND informative.

http://podcasts.nytimes.com/podcasts/...

[Sook-Yi]

Thanks for all the helpful suggestions. I am also interested to know if there are any websites out there that list books that are good for book clubs. Essentially, new books that will get the discussion going.

[Tony]

Sook-Yi wrote: "I am also interested to know if there are any websites out there that list books that are good for book clubs."

There a bunch of different sites, including Amazon.com Book Club page, and the Reading Group Guides site, which is kind of ad-heavy and badly designed, but full of good content, and don't forget the the GoodReads Book Club shelf. The big publishers will also generally have a section of their sites suggesting which of their titles might be good for bookclubs.

[Maria]

www.bookdrum.com is a great site that I have just rediscovered.

Books have profiles that users can edit and contribute to - think of Wikipedia. The profiles consist of summaries and reviews and all of the usual stuff... but they also have glossaries of all the difficult or foreign words used in the book, maps of the locations featured in the book, descriptions of the setting with photos and videos, and "bookmarks" (annotations).

There aren't that many book profiles finished yet, but it is still very fun to poke around.

[Maria]

Instead of a year-end best-of list, NPR made a Best Books of 2013 interactive tool: http://apps.npr.org/best-books-2013/#/_

I discovered a few books that I hadn't heard of that sound great!