Books, Readers and Beyond:#52 What to Read

iHCPL the Next Generation #52

Exercise #1: I chose to find a read-a-like for Clive Cussler's Raise the Titanic! Searching Novelist Plus gives me a couple of options. I can find similar authors or similar books. In this case we are looking for similar books. Under the "Find Similar Books" option, I have the following subjects to select or deselect:
Titanic (Steamship)
Salvage
Pitt, Dirk
International intrigue
Suspense stories, American
Adventure stories, American
Sea stories, American

I remove Dirk Pitt from the mix, so I don't get just Dirk Pitt books. The result still gives me Cussler books, but others as well:
Raise the Titanic! Cussler, Clive
Night probe! Cussler, Clive
Bahamas blue Poyer, David
Blindfold game Stabenow, Dana
Dreamboat Gould, Judith
Tempest down Rovin, Jeff
Black storm Poyer, David
The threat: a novel Poyer, David
Pacific vortex! Cussler, Clive
Valhalla rising Cussler, Clive

I've been using Novelist, then Novelist Plus for quite a while and really like the search options it provides.


What should I read next? asks for title & author and returns a list:

Bear Island - Alistair MacLean
Golden Buddha - Clive Cussler, Craig Dirgo
Polar Shift - Clive Cussler, Paul Kemprecos
Treasure of Khan - Clive Cussler, Dirk Cussler
James Bond: Spy Who Loved Me - Ian Fleming, Jim Lawrence, Yaroslav Horak
Plan of Attack - Dale Brown
The Veteran - Frederick Forsyth
The Coming of the King - Nikolai Tolstoy Snuff Fiction - Robert Rankin
James Bond: Goldfinger - Ian Fleming, Henry Gammidge, John McLusky

I could not find the Cussler title on any of the The Fiction_L Booklists and did not like the set up on this site. It does not have a good search option.

Looking at the two sets of results that I do have show that there are similarities with additional Cussler books listed. However they do diverge a bit with the other books. I've always considered the Dirk Pitt books a cross between James Bond and Indiana Jones. I think the Novelist list is a little more accurate for me, but depending on taste, either of these lists will give you good ideas.


Exercise #2: Find two books suitable for a fourth grade girl interested in animals and another two books for her thirteen year old brother who is interested in ghost stories.

I'll be using Novelist Plus for both these searches.
For a fourth grade girl interested in animals, I chose the Recommended Reads for older kids. This has lists for both Animals (nonfiction) and Animal Stories (fiction). I chose Animals and found a list of books on Horses and found

Horse breeds of the world by Brent Kelley and

Horse & pony book: a practical guide to caring for a horse or pony by Carolyn Henderson.

For her her thirteen year old brother, I used the Curiosities list under Recommended Reads for Teens. The two title I chose are

Real ghosts, restless spirits, and haunted places by Brad Steiger and

Unexplained by Judy Allen.


Exercise #3: A customer tells you that he's read every book written by Dean Koontz and asks you to find an author who writes similar books.

Using Novelist Plus again, I was able to find author read-a-likes

Dan Simmons, Charles Grant, and Robert McCammon


Exercise#4: A customer has read Alanna: the First Adventure by Tamora Pierce. She would like to read the other books in the series in order.

Using KDL's Whats Next? database, I was able to quickly find the series containing the book.

Song of the Lioness quartet
Book 1 Alanna: The first adventure
Book 2 In the hand of the goddess
Book 3 The woman who rides like a man
Book 4 Lioness rampant

I would also recommend the site to the customer, in case she wants to find out about the other series in the same world. Novelist Plus could also have been used to do this.