Gimme Envy

Sometimes, another library comes up with something so cool that:

a) We're in awe
b) We're jealous
c) We're champing at the bit to become petty thieves
d) All of the above

The most recent resource to inspire this collegial envy is Gimme! from the Scottsdale Public Library. Gimme! is a simple book recommendation tool that's open to everyone. Just choose what you're looking for from the easy drop-down menu, and Voila! Author, title, book description, and brief review! For example, I asked Gimme! to "gimme a laser gun", and was told to read Cosmic by Frank Cottrell Boyce. When I commanded, "Gimme something old school," it replied with Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, one of my all-time favorites.

While we're just not as cool as Scottsdale, we do have something in our catalog that can help you get book recommendations. If you're in the catalog and looking at a title you like, say, Neil Gaiman's Sandman, you can find a button that says "More Like This" on the top row. When you click on it, it gives you a list of similar titles based on subject headings. In this example, I have 1,967 suggestions, but I can modify the keywords searched, or further limit and modify the search to a reasonable length of suggestions.

If you'd still like more book recommendations, check out the page, About Books and Literature, linked on our homepage. The Book clubs, lists, genres section in particular has a great collection of "If you like" lists, which should start you on your way to piles and piles of great books to read. But either way, if you decide to use Scottsdale's Gimme! to get suggestions, we won't cry or pout. We promise!

Bookulating Suggest - O - Mometer

Confused about what to get to get for the reader in your life? Confused about what you yourself should read next?

Try the Bookulating Suggest-O-Mometer. Listen to the introduction, punch in some basic data, and you get links to book reviews that fit the reader's demographic profile. You don't need a ton of data, just things like the reader's age, gender, political "rudder", and an interest or hobby. The recommendations are then linked to print and often video book reviews, so you can "preview" the book before reading or buying it. Most of all, the layout is pretty fun to use.

At the top of my "read for purpose" recommendations is Freakonomics, which I've been meaning to read for a while. The video reviewer gave it a "4 out of 5", with a detailed description and critique. In my "read for pleasure" recommendations is The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie. Hmm, you know, I still haven't read that one, despite it being one of the most controversial titles of the last century. Perhaps I'll see how accurate the Suggest-O-Mometer is and put it on the top of my list!