Choose-a-book ... an info wrap

OPen Mic Wednesday

  If you are hunting for something new and interesting to read there are plenty of places to check out to help you do just that.  Here are five of the best book recommendation sites and services that you can visit and I'm sure there are plenty more. If you have any to share please leave a comment.   I'm sure everyone would love to your suggestions also.





Unwrapping...   



 Goodreads

GoodReads is more than just a book recommendation site, although it excels at helping your find new books to read based on the ones you enjoy. You can build a virtual "shelf" of books you own or have already read, share your progress with the books you're currently reading, rate the books you've read, leave reviews, and connect with other readers. You can also use those ratings to get book suggestions from the site's massive database of books. Your friends can make direct suggestions to you, and even if the book suggestions that the site builds aren't enough, you can go diving into user-generated book lists, reviews, and more. 

One great thing that many of you mentioned about GoodReads is that you can connect your Amazon account to quickly build your virtual shelf. As you finish books on your Kindle, GoodReads will automatically mark the book as complete and update your recommendations accordingly. It's also hard to understate the power of GoodReads' community that your favorite authors actively use the service too, and they share what they're reading as well. 

BookBub

While BookBub isn't strictly a book recommendation service, it does bring you super-low-cost books based on your interests every day. The service is free, and when you sign up, you tell BookBub what kinds of books you like to read. From there, you'll get an email from BookBub every day (you can choose whether it comes in the morning or evening) with book deals for that day. When we say "deal," we mean it—many of BookBub's titles are free entirely, $0.99, or just a couple of bucks. In some cases, they're new titles that the author is trying to get momentum behind, and in other cases they're just great, under-the-radar titles you might not have discovered otherwise.

Library Thing

LibraryThing has been around for a long time and is still a great user-powered book ratings, review, and recommendation site. The service calls itself the world's largest book club, and that's a lot like the overall feel. Once you sign up, you'll be encouraged to start adding books you've read and leave reviews for them. Behind its book ratings and reviews though, LibraryThing is a powerful tool to catalog and organize your entire book collection. It doesn't take much to add all of the books in your library so you have a running collection of both your physical books and ebooks all in one place. The service will also connect to your Amazon account to automatically pull down books you own and have read. 

Thanks to its massive community, its book recommendations are often spot on, reflective of users who have libraries like yours and have rated books the way you have. The basic service is free, and you can add up to 200 books. $10/yr or $25/one time gets you a premium membership that lets you add and catalog as many books as you like. Those of you who nominated it noted that its especially good for people who enjoy non-fiction or books that aren't necessarily in the popular zeitgeist, and for getting recommendations from people who don't just list the same dozen titles over and over again.

Reddit's BookSuggestions Subreddit

If you're a Reddit fan, the /r/booksuggestions subreddit is a great place to go to see what everyone's reading, or to get recommendations based on specific authors or titles you've enjoyed, or see what people suggest in specific genres. Some of the top threads are community challenges and calls for recommendations on a specific theme, but it doesn't take much scrolling to find interesting threads for people looking for specific types of books. One person is bedtime books for their kids that combine epic battles with strong female characters, another person is interested in science fiction titles without aliens or looming galactic threats. The sky's the limit, and you can just as easily post your own topic with what you're looking for. 

Those of you who called it out in the call for contenders praised the subreddit for being equally weird and interesting, a label often applied to Reddit in general. You'll definitely find something new and interesting to read, that much is true, although often the most broad recommendations do sometimes tend to follow what's popular and in the common consciousness. Still, if you refine your thread as much as possible and include what you've read and what you're looking for, you're in for good tips.

whatshouldireadnext.com

Simply start typing a name of a book you like and click on the closest match.

Enter a book you like and the site will analyze the huge database of real reader’s favourite books to provide book recommendations and suggestions for what to read next.

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Read on and read always!

It's a wrap.