Thing #4 (This is kind of like a Seuss book, isn't it?:-)

What Do I Read Next? is a fantastic readers' advisory tool available through TEL or Gale Group Databases. You can search for good reads by author, title, genre, subject, location, time period, character descriptor, character name, or full text. You can even look at lists of award winners or use the "Help me find a book" tool for recommendations based on criteria you provide about a favorite title.


I decided to explore the "Help me find a book" process to see what I could come up with. I used One For the Money, Janet Evanovich's first Plum novel. After you search for the title, HMFAB will provide a list of subject headings that you can tick off. I used "mystery" as the genre, "amateur detective" as the story type and "New Jersey" as a setting and got 51 good-quality results that include books by Sarah Shankman, Shelley Freydont, and Valerie Wolzien.

What do I Read Next? has a limitation, though. It's a computer program, so it lacks an understanding of the human x factor. It understands a request for mysteries set in New Jersey, for example, but not for authors who write in the same wry, wacky tone as Evanovich. It can't find books with the same snappy dialogue or the quality of tension between the romantic interests. One of the results from my search was Harlan Coban. He's gritty, action oriented, and definitely not wacky. But he writes mysteries set in New Jersey.

So that's where we come in. We can take the recommendations that we get from What Do I Read Next? and narrow it down further to tailor the recommendations for a patron. Or for ourselves for that matter. Either way, What Do I Read Next is a very helpful tool to discover your next favorite book.