I searched Novelist for a YA book, The Wreckers by Iain Lawrence, book one of his High Seas Trilogy. Under the 'search similar books' tab I removed a number of the criteria which were too specific, e.g. Cornwall England or Teenage Fiction, Canadian. What I got was a surprisingly interesting list of titles, including, of course, some other titles by Mr. Lawrence, but also Shackleton's Stowaway by Victoria McKernan and several other titles that are now on my want to read list!
Next I tried the What Do I Read Next? site but got an 'internal server error' and moved on to What's Next at the Kent District Library. After finding the title, and selecting the "find similar items" tab I got a list of 82 titles ranging from Robinson Crusoe by Defoe to Gordon Korman's Escape (2008) with lots of titles, in between even some non-ficiton and easy readers. I did not find a way to get a more specific list.
From there I went to Library BookLists and Bibliographies. Here, I found some neat lists, but could not search by specific title. I went to the Booklists YA Fiction and then to Adventure Stories/Suspense and finally to Young Adult Survival Adventure Books and found a 6 page list of titles that was very good, including The Smugglers by Lawrence which is the 2nd book of the High Seas trilogy.
Even though the results were not similar, they were still quite interesting and I learned a lot. I am especially impressed with the Novelist Plus site because of the ability to narrow the results. I also liked the Library BookLists site for the really interesting reading lists that people have put together and posted for all of us book geeks.
Exercise 2
Susan a (rather precocious) fourth grader comes to the library looking for books about horses. She is a good reader and has read all of both the Saddle Club series and the Black Stallion series. She wants some new fiction about horses but also a non-fiction book about real horses. I do a quick search in Novelist Plus, with 'horses' in the search box and limit to older and younger kids. (Of course, Susan is looking over my shoulder at this point!) We pull up a list of titles, but she quickly notices the subject heading of 'girls and horses' in the box on the left and tells me to "Go there!" Clicking on that subject brings up and list of titles with one sentence descriptions. She has already read the first entry, but likes the third title Horses of Dreamland by Lois Duncan. For a non-fiction book, we go back to the previous page since I noticed several non-fiction titles there before clicking on the 'girls and horses' subject link. Scrolling through the titles, with Susan looking over my shoulder, we see a book on draft horses, Horsepower, the Wonder of Draft Horses. Susan chooses this because her uncle has a carriage business, which is how she came to love horses in the first place. She says, "My uncle will like this book." I tell her that's great and ask her if I can help her with anything else. She says her older brother (13 years old) asked her to get him some books on ghost stories. But he is not that great of a reader and would probably like something shorter, maybe even some short stories; he tends to lose interest quickly. Going back to the original search I enter 'ghost stories' in the search box and limit the search to teens and older kids. Susan thinks her brother will like the first title on the list, Ghost Town: Seven Ghostly Tales, because it talks about the real towns where the stories are based. She then asks if we can find a book of true ghost stories. I scroll through a few pages looking for nonfiction titles without finding anything appealing. Going back to the start screen I enter 'true ghosts' as a search term and come up with a list of true ghost stories. Susan likes the sound of the second title, Totally haunted kids; true ghost stories, which describes cases of children encountering ghosts. She thinks her brother will like this title, so we call it a day, and another satisfied customer heads towards the checkout desk.
Exercise 3
Looking for authors similar to Dean Koontz, I first tried the What Should I Read Next? site, with very poor results: only a couple of other Koontz titles and a few others that did not sound particularly promising. I moved to the Library Booklists & Bibliographies site and went to the Booklist: Adult Fiction link. This brought up a long list of various genres and sub genres and I scrolled until I found a 'horror' link, which I looked through for some read-alike info, but was unable to find anything. I went back to the Adult Fiction link and scrolled some more until I came across a 'readalikes'. This list included Harris County Public Library but I did not find a readalike list for Dean Koontz. Backing up a page I tried the Wake County Public Library list because it indicated a "very long list" of readalikes. This list proved more fruitful; it was alphabetical by first name of the author and I quickly located an 'If You Like Dean Koontz" list. Steering clear of the other two authors in "The Big Three" triumvirate (King, Saul), I found some less well known authors/titles that seemed worth checking on: Afterlife by Douglas Clegg and Creepers by David Morrell. From here I went to the Novelist Plus page because there is a very straight forward link to 'author readalikes' on the front of the site. Among the authors who are readalikes for Dean Koontz fans, I found another two authors who sounded intriguing: Charles Grant (Millenium Quartet), and Dan Simmons (Summer of Night).
Exercise 4
This one was pretty straightforward. I am not familiar with this title or author, but it sounded like a YA or juvenile series, so I went directly to the Mid-Continent Public Library site. From there a simple search by the book title yielded the needed results.
Series Title: Song of the Lionness
Series order: Alanna: the first adventure; In the hand of the goddess; The woman who rides like a man; Lionness rampant.
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