Fun fact hidden in this blog post!

Here’s two places you should visit if you need a book recommendation. They’re fun. They’re fast. And they work.

Literature-Map.com
​“The odds will be ever in your favor if you use Literature-Map to pick your next book!” says Lisa Sprague, reader extraordinaire and the person who introduced me to this “tourist map of literature.”

​Here’s how it works: type in the name of an author who you enjoy and a search will return other authors whose works and/or style are similar. The results come up as a map instead of a boring list. Check out my search of Gillian Flynn (fun fact: the “g” in her first name is pronounced hard as in gill, not Jill), author of Gone Girl:

Sara Lesinski recently invited me to do book talks with her freshman English classes, and I shared this resource with them. They had a hoot watching the names swarm around their screens until the words came to rest around their author of choice: John Green or Rick Yancey or J.K. Rowling.

Where will the map bring you next?

WhatShouldIReadNext.com

​Seriously, that’s the name of the website. And yes, sometimes life can be that easy. Thank you, Ashleigh Malec, for helping to make my life a little easier.
All you do is type in the name of a book or author you enjoy and the search returns a list of recommendations for you. It lists the titles’ themes and provides a link to Amazon, where you can do some more investigation. Here’s my search for John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars:

Love stories? Fate? England? Looks like The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sightby Jennifer E. Smith is the next book for me! Oh, and how convenient: It’s also on the Abe list for this year.