A question for the literary folks on my friendslist

[mllelaurel]

Do any of you know if there's an existing (and good) lj community for book recommendations? ('If you like Book X, you'll love books Y and Z')

If not, I'm very tempted to start one myself.

Comments

[ryenna.livejournal.com]

I don't know of any communities on LJ, but one of my favorite sources for finding new books to read is NoveList. I'd link, but I don't know if it would work to link from somewhere other than my library's site since we subscribe to it (even though it doesn't require a login).

It has a far more intuitive subject tagging system than the official Library of Congress sanctioned subject headings, so it's easier to find the sort of book you want and at least it used to bring up suggestions if you look at one particular book's record.

That being said, I'd love a book rec community.

[mllelaurel.livejournal.com]

*looks* Yes, my library subscribes to NoveList as well. Sweet!

I still want to do the book recs comm, though! What do you think would be a good, catchy community name?

[ryenna.livejournal.com]

NoveList used to have a great function where you could describe a plot, but I can't find it anymore.

[mllelaurel.livejournal.com]

That's too bad.

[trialia]

bookshare should be what you want :)

[mllelaurel.livejournal.com]

It seems cool, so I'll be sure to check it out. What I'm looking for, though, is a bit more specific than a "I like this book, here's why' recommendation. Literally, what I want is bunches of book suggestions organized by a book you've read and liked in the past. Some kind of anchor like that. Not necessarily, "This book deals with similar subjects," though that's possible, but "This book has a similar feel to it." Does that make sense?

[trialia]

It does. Someone there might know of one, though I don't.

[theashgirl.livejournal.com]

I would love a comm for that. Mostly I just use Amazon in various ways - the recommendations it gives me, the tags, other things under the same heading or by the same author, and the 'people who bought this also bought...' functions.

Which is dangerous, as then it's so easy to add them to your cart and suddenly end up out $100 when all you wanted was a damn book rec. *cough*

[mllelaurel.livejournal.com]

I'm thisclose to starting one myself. Contemplating comm rules close.

[mllelaurel.livejournal.com]

Amazon's what gave me the idea, pretty much, but I wanted that on a larger scale. Er...longer list of specific recs scale.

[theashgirl.livejournal.com]

That would be massively helpful, since I was considering doing this personally. Like the other day I decided I wanted to know every book ever written that could be considered steampunk, and Amazon only took me so far.

I'm thinking we could make posts for all the different subgenres, like steampunk, since I just mentioned it, and tag it with the subgenre itself, as well as the larger genres it would fall under (such as scifi/fantasy and fiction/literature, since those are the probable sections you'd find it under in a bookstore or library).

But of course the most important part is the catchy comm name.

[mllelaurel.livejournal.com]

That's an awesome idea!

So far, all I've got for comm names is next_book. What do you think?

[theashgirl.livejournal.com]

Works for me!

[mllelaurel.livejournal.com]

Aaaand, comm (http://www.livejournal.com/community/next_book/info)! Tell me what you think - is everything sense-making so far?

[theashgirl.livejournal.com]

Looks good! And I love you for putting Kushiel's Dart first. God I love those books (I really need to read Mercy, as I have it. I just haven't had the energy for huge book lately).

[mllelaurel.livejournal.com]

In that case, I think this thing may be go for launch.

Dart's one of my favorite books. It came to mind immediately when I was looking for a good example.

I didn't love Mercy the way I loved a lot of the others, but it was still very engaging.

[theashgirl.livejournal.com]

So far I still like the Phedre books better than the Imriel books, but the Imriel books are still *good*.

I tried to read Banewreaker and didn't get very far into it. I don't know if it just wasn't for me, or if I just wasn't in the mood for it then.

[mllelaurel.livejournal.com]

I think I liked the first books of each trilogy more than the second and third. And yeah, I've been trying to start Banewreaker all summer. So far, it's not working. My problem's it's missing a lot of the intimacy of Carey's other books. The way she really gets into a protagonist's head is one of the things I love about her writing.

[mirrored-echo.livejournal.com]

Hm. Would this be a database of books sort of thing, or a place where people post "I like Book X, give me suggestions on what to read next?"

[mllelaurel.livejournal.com]

It starts out as the latter, but the results will eventually serve as the former.