Internet Resources for Bibliophiles

Advanced Book Exchange (abebooks) - a service for out of print books ("because you read") -- the "ebay" of books.

Alibris Books -- Over 50 million used, new and out-of-print books! You'll find it at Alibris.

All About Romance — a good site for romance readers, providing reviews, interviews, discussion, and even a "Purple Prose Parody."

AllReaders.com -- Choose from hundreds of plot, theme, character, and setting options to find just what you're looking for. Search by author, or do a detailed search and use the drop-down menu options and check-boxes to specify plot types, historical period, and many other options. You can even enter reviews of books you've read, and become an "All Readers Scholar."

Amazon.com Books Online is a full-service bookstore where you can order books online and have them shipped to your home. They provide several interesting services, allowing readers and critics to attach their own reviews to the book and selling books at a substantial discount. They also will recommend books to you and have lists of award-winning books. This site is well worth a look.

Author Webliography - contains links to online author guides from A to Z.

AwardWeb: Collections of Literary Award Information is an informative site that provides information about many different book awards, as well as lists of the books that have won them. Its main focus is science fiction and fantasy awards, but information about and links to awards in several other genres are also included.

BookBrowse -- This site provides free excerpts from current books and bestsellers, so you can read a bit and decide if you want to read the whole book. Search by category, title, author, or bestseller. Reading guides, author biographies and interviews, and book reviews are also included. Sign up here for a free weekly e-mail update of new and recommended books!

BookBrowser — "the guide for avid readers" is now owned by Barnes and Noble. Contains reviews, reading lists(which include series and sequel information for books of all genres), author links (and a helpful pseudonym list), forthcoming books, and more.

BookFinder — This "book shopping search engine" scans the databases of multiple booksellers all at once, to find new, used, or out of print books. An excellent service for people trying to track down a hard-to-find or rare book!

Book Page is the Web page of BookPage magazine, a national review magazine that helps people select books to read and learn more about the people who wrote them. Features include current reviews as well as archives; a Feature of the Week; and information about Oprah’s book club. The reviews are informative and very well-written.

Book Wire bills itself as "the first place to look for book information on the World Wide Web." This site includes information about author tours, links to several book review publications, other book-related sites on the Web, publisher information, and more.

Children's Literature Web Guide - an excellent source of information about children's and young adult literature

Curled Up with a Good Book is a cozy site that includes fiction, non-fiction, and speculative book reviews.

Fantastic Fiction -- Search for authors or books, series information and more. Includes fantasy, horror and science fiction.

Fiction DB -- Includes information about romance, mysteries and westerns. It's a searchable database of authors and titles that includes series information, reviews, pseudonym information, and more.

Focus Fiction from the San Antonio TX Public Library is chock full of information about fiction including booklists compiled by the San Antonio Public Library, links to books and author resources on the Web, a bibliography of fiction set in Texas, and a list of San Antonio writers.

If You Like...Fiction from Hennepin County, Minnesota -- Search by author's name or by genre, or browse a subject category list for recommendations.

If You Like..., a Christchurch, New Zealand Library website, provides an index of reading ideas and lists of authors in several genres.

Internet Bookshop Homepage (W.H.Smith) - A British bookshop where you can browse and order books. Especially useful for books that are out of print or unavailable in U.S. editions.

Knowledge Rush -- a site that provides links to the online access of books that are no longer copyrighted.

Overbooked -- This site has featured titles, links to genre books, reading lists (including links to yearly "Best of" lists compiled by many different organizations), theme book lists, and reader's advisory links.

Publishers Weekly Bestseller List -- This list is updated weekly. We print the information out each week, and post it for our patrons so they'll know what the current bestsellers are, and whether we have them at our library.

Reading Rants - Out of the Ordinary Teen Booklists.

ReviewsOfBooks.com - Find in depth professional reviews of popular books without any registration hassles.

The Romance Reader — a great source for reviews of romances, author interviews, and news of upcoming books.

Salt Lake County Library's Reader's Choice - Check out what the staff of Utah's Salt Lake County Library recommend. Each year they provide reviews of the best books they've read.

Western Writers of America -- Find out about Spur Award-winning Westerns, or read the online version of Roundup, the WWA's magazine (which includes reviews of current Western releases).

Yahoo's list of award-winning book sites provides links to sites listing all different kinds of award-winning books. Literature awards, as well as more specialized awards for children's books, mysteries, science fiction and fantasy, are included.

Just sign up here then sit back and wait for a new chapter each day -- about 20 pages in a week. It only takes a few minutes reading each day to get a sampling of what books await you out there!

Reading Group Guides

The Reading Group Guides site is excellent -- it has over 400 reading group guides and you can sign up for a monthly newsletter with information on the latest books and reading guides they have added.

Oprah's Book Club is BACK and so are her Book Club's fans. Check it out right here!

iVillage Women's Network has a Book Club site set up where you can discuss books online and find good resources.

Sometimes it's helpful to have a list of questions to get the discussion going about a book. Several publishers and web sites have kindly created reading guides:

• Ballantine Reader's Circle — provides discussion guides for popular Ballantine books such as Joy School, Pope Joan, The Sparrow, and more.
• Bantam, Broadway, Dell and Doubleday's Book Group Corner — providing discussion guides for books by Margaret Atwood, Maya Angelou, Pat Conroy, Alice McDermott, and many more.
• Beacon Press Reading Guides -- reading guides for Walden and other books published by Beacon Press.
• The Book Spot - Reading Group Guides -- This resource is very helpful -- it lists books by title, and provides links to the publisher's reading guide for the book.
• Ga-ga for Ya-Ya -- Reading group guides for Rebecca Wells' Little Altars Everywhere and Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood...and don't miss the newest Ya-Ya offering, Ya-Yas in Bloom.
• HarperCollins Reader's Guides — guides for books by Barbara Kingsolver, Rebecca Wells, Arundhati Roy, Wally Lamb, and more.
• Henry Holt Reader's Guides — includes guides to The Enchantment of Lily Dahl, Mason and Dixon, and more.
• Oprah's Book Club — you'll find information about current and past choices of Oprah's Book Club, as well as book reviews, reading questions, and author biographies.
• Penguin Putnam's Reading Group Guides — includes guides for Penguin Putnam books including Sophie's World, The Deep End of the Ocean, the Mitford books by Jan Karon, and many more.
• Random House Reading Guides — includes Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden.
• Reading Group Choices -- This web site is a companion to the Reading Group Choices book. Billing itself as the resource center for book groups, it includes information and discussion questions for many books, suggests books that might be good reads, and also includes information for people who are just starting up a book group.
• Reading Group Guides -- a great site for reading groups. It has over 400 reading guides, in categories such as poetry, religion & spirituality, historical fiction, bestsellers and more. Well worth a look.
• Reading Woman -- "a place for readers and book discussion groups looking beyond the bestseller lists for their reading selections. "
• Time Warner Bookmarks has lots of reading guides for authors such as Anita Shreve, Billie Letts, Tony Earley (Jim the Boy), Janet Fitch (White Oleander), and more.
• W. W. Norton Reading Group Guides include titles such as Ship Fever, Voyage of the Narwhal, Wide Sargasso Sea and more.
• Vintage Books Reading Group Guides — provides reading group guides for popular titles such as Amy and Isabelle, Cold Mountain, All the Pretty Horses, Ellen Foster, I was Amelia Earhart, and more.