A Search Engine for Bookworms

Wow, what an engine. Allreaders ( http://www.allreaders.com ) allows you to search for book information through several different elements, including plot, main character, main adversary, plot elements, etc.

The site divides the books into several genres (literature, sci-fi, romance, etc.). The site covers several authors but it's not comprehensive. You can list the authors in each author or go straight to the search form. The search form for the detailed search asks a number of questions about a book, including plot points, etc. When you use the detailed search form, a lot of your choices will cause the page to reload. Don't worry about that. For example, you may choose an "animal story" plot point. Once you've chosen that, the page will reload and give you more options (in this case, you'll be able to specify what kind of animal.)

You can answer as many or as few questions as you like in the detailed search. The search results page will give you book name, author name, and number of matches. Click on a book name and you'll be taken to the book summary pages. The summary pages contain book review summaries, and summary details (basically information about the book presented in the same way as the detailed search form requests it.) The elements that match your search are highlighted.

At the bottom of the page are the top ten books in the AllReaders search engine that match the summarized book's characteristics. I was tickled to see that Atlas Shrugged was such a close match to Alice in Wonderland. Who knew?

The detailed search form will seem overwhelming at first, but it's worth the time to play with it and see what you can get out of it. Maybe some new reading recommendations. Worth a look.

Posted to Humanities-Literature | TrackBack