Books, Readers and Beyond: #52 What to Read

The first exercise was to find a Read-alike for a book. I choose Anne McCaffrey's Dragonflight. Novelist Plus gave me another book by McCaffrey. Also listed was Monster's Legacy by Andre Norton and Child of an Ancient City by Tad Williams. I next went to What Should I Read Next? After typing in my author, I got a short list of possible titles including some by McCaffrey and Arrows of the Queen by Mercedes Lackey and Heritage and Exile: The Heritage of Hastur by Marion Zimmer Bradley. On Fiction_L Booklists, I was able to select books in the following areas: Genres, Character, Setting, Author, Audience, "Best of" lists and Miscellaneous. I chose "Genres" and after reading through the list selected "Fantasy Fiction with a Female Protagonist" since the main character in Dragonflight is Lessa. The list was a nice length and McCaffrey was listed again as was another book by Marion Zimmer Bradley, this time it was Mists of Avalon but not Tad Williams. There was one by Andre Norton entitled To the King a Daughter. The easiest way for me to find a read-alike was through Novelist Plus .


I used Novelist Plus to find the books for both the fourth grade girl and her thirteen year old brother. When I got to the site I selected age range of "Older Kids" and choose dogs, I found over 2300 titles listed including both fiction and nonfiction. Two of the books are: a nonfiction entitled The Right Dog for the Job: Ira's Path from Service Dog to Guide Dog by Dorothy Patent and a fiction book entitled Fun Dog , Sun Dog by Deborah Heiligman. For her brother, after selecting "Teens" and ghost, I found Melvin Burgess' The Ghost Behind the Wall and All the Lovely Bad Ones: a Ghost Story by Mary Downing Hahn. Even though the site Read the Books was not listed in the posting, it is a database on HCPL. I was able to find various books for both of the siblings very quickly.


To find read-alike authors for the customer who liked Dean R. Koontz, I went first to Novelist Plus . After selecting "Author Read-alikes" I went to "Authors K-L" and clicked on Dean Koontz's name. I found a short article about him and some suggestions of other authors. Three of the authors listed are Dan Simmons, Greg Bear and Robert McCammon. The other site that I explored was What Should I Read Next? . After entering Dean Koontz's name I got a list of possible authors and titles. Three of those listed include: Stephen King, F. Paul Wilson and Phil Rickman.


For the final exercise I went to the Mid-Continent Public Library and searched for Tamora Pierce. The book, Alanna: the First Adventure is the first book in the Song of the Lioness quartet. The other titles in the series in order are: In the Hand of the Goddess, Woman who Rides like a Man and Lioness Rampart. The site Fantasic Fiction was real easy to use and gave me the info very quickly.