Novelist Thing

I have used Novelist before and usually find it pretty useful. There have been very few circumstances where I haven't found what I was looking for using that tool.

I searched for teen historical fiction set in the 20th century. I need to print some of this stuff to update our teen reader's advisory binder I created two or three years ago. It would be so much more helpful than just googling stuff and stealing (or borrowing!) from other libraries' websites.

I have recommended Novelist to patrons in the past, but I think I'm going to use it more now. I honestly don't read much fiction (I check a lot of it out, but lose interest or get disappointed and never finish the book) and one question I get asked a lot is "do you have any books that are like [insert author here]?" Since I don't read any of that stuff, I usually say "no" and send them to one of our clerks or LAs who do read fiction.

Another tool I like to use for book recommendations is Amazon (or other booksellers' websites). I can type in a title or subject term and see similar titles, plus the titles that customers purchase along with those books. For example, recently I read Lisa Gardner's Live to Tell, which is about some crimes that take place involving a children's psychiatric ward. I finished the book because I had never read about children with severe mental health issues (usually the kid has cancer or some other physical ailment) and it was very interesting. I wanted to learn more. I searched several terms in the library catalog, and came up with nothing interesting. I tried Novelist, with the same results (I just kept getting books written in Lisa Gardner's style). I finally tried Amazon and found one or two that turned out to be ok. I guess the main problem in this scenario was that there are very few books written about this subject, fiction or non-fiction. Nevertheless, Amazon can sometimes be helpful in these situations.