Have you tried Gnooks.com or Literature-Map.com?

[zoebartlett]

I just found two websites:

www.gnooks.com -- If you type in authors you like, it will give you other authors to try. If you click on "I Like It" or "I Don''t Like It" they''ll give you other authors to also check out.

www.literature-map.com -- Type in an author and a whole list of other authors will pop up. The cool thing about this is that the list of authors are arranged in a web-like fashion, with some authors grouped close together. The closer the authors are, the closer they are in their style of writing. The site says that the closer the authors are, the more likely it is that you''ll like both of them (paraphrasing).

I thought they might help people looking for other books/authors to try when looking for something new.

 

[elrohwen]

I just tried both and while I love the idea, I''m not sure I liked them in practice. I read a lot of classic literature, and when I type in, say Charles Dickens, it gives me very basic comparisons with very basic authors. Off the top of my head I can think of at least 3 other authors who are fairly similar to Dickens and none of them were even listed (and they''re not obscure either). And one of the closest names was Toni Morrison?? I don''t see how that fits at all.

Maybe it''s better for more modern stuff and different genres? It just didn''t seem to have more than your basic handful of classic writers that every high school kid already knows about.

Zoe, did you try them? How was your success?

 

[Brown.Eyed.Girl]

I tried Literature map and I liked it. I only tried it for sci-fi authors but got some great recommendations. I love John Scalzi because he tends to do space opera w/ humor, and Lit map was great for pointing me towards some authors that are similar (that I totally hadn''t heard of before).

 

[Blackpaw]

thanks for this Zoe, i love it

im always wondering what authors are out there i might like...just waiting to be discovered

i like these visual search engine apps for something a bit different, i guess that they didnt take off for regular searched because people are prone to read a computer screen like a book....but i imagine that more people read ''pictures'' better than words, or at least read them more intuitively.

Very interesting stuff

 

[brazen_irish_hussy]

I tried it with some current authors and no more luck.
Douglas adams produced some wierd results. Gaiman was expected, but Jane Austin, Poe?
JK Rowling, Ayn Rand, Palahniuk, Dan Brown and Ann Rice were the closest. Other than Rowling, I hate all of them.
I tried Jasper FForde who writes sci-fi about great literature and got mostly people I have not heard of, but they did have Katie Fforde, who is his cousin but a romance novelist.
The one for Neil Gaiman was pretty good though

 

[Brown.Eyed.Girl]

It''s a little too inclusive of authors I think (i.e. Douglas Adams --> Jane Austen)

I do like it because it led me to a couple authors I hadn''t discovered yet (like Jack McDevitt) but it''s rather inefficient. But I''m of the view that if, as inefficient as Gnooks and Literature Map are, they lead me to just one author who I like that I haven''t discovered yet, it''s well worth it