Friday, February 17, 2006

What to read Next?

If anyone's bored and looking for something to do, whichbook.net is another of the current trend in online recommendation sites, well worth a look if you fancy something entirely new to read: searching for books based in Scotland, for instance, threw up,

The Black Chamber
By Jack Gordon

Reader comment
A gay bodice-ripper, or more correctly kilt-ripper. The period setting is an excuse for lots of descriptive male on male sex. How did Bonnie Prince Charlie become involved??

which is not something I'd generally think of reading.


You can search for recommendations based on any number of different criteria, including your mood, plot, the book's main character and even things like the country in which the story is based.

What's especially brilliant, though, is you can then check the recommended book against your nearest library and see if it's available to borrow - even, if you have a card for the library, have it put aside for picking up later (the Javascript that controls this only works in IE, not Firefox, sadly).

Altogether a very impressive little application.
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8 Comments:

Blogger Stuart Douglas said...

Ah, you must be the creator of the "Who should I vote for?" site which outed me as Liberal Democrat, much to my socialist surprise :)

I'd actually fogotten about "What Should I read next?" which IIRC was flagged up on Peculiar Lives a while back - I must go back and have another look, but apologies in the meantime for not mentioning the site at the same time as whichbook.net...

4:56 pm  
Blogger Unknown said...

Socialist? Me too. I hope you're not one of those SWP fellows, however. Although they did manage to (quite literally, if my source is to be trusted) piss on John Major's head...

Cheers to the anonymous creator of What Should I Read Next?

I enjoy http://www.allconsuming.net , as well.

12:41 am  
Blogger Unknown said...

Would you not also agree with me, Stuart, that the 1980s represent all that is worst in human history, both culturally and politically?

7:21 am  
Blogger Stuart Douglas said...

Stewart M: Socialist? Me too. I hope you're not one of those SWP fellows

I used to be and learned all I knew about Marxism from Paul Foot's column in the Socialist Worker paper, but I was about 13 at that point and I seem to have been moving steadily away from the hard left ever since. And now I'm most comfortable with the Lib Dems, which was unexpected.

Stewart M: the 1980s represent all that is worst in human history, both culturally and politically?

Politcally it was horrible - Reagan and Thatcher lording it over the world in a seemingly unending right-wing political hegemony. I don't know about culturally though - granted, omost TV was rubbish and I'm hard pressed to think of that many great books, but musically, this was the era of Billy Bragg, The Smiths and Kate Bush's best albums.

Not a patch on the 70s, true, but better than the 90s in that respect at least...

4:54 pm  
Blogger TimeWarden said...

1986 was a good year for television giving us "The Singing Detective", "The Lives and Loves of a She-Devil" and the first season of "A Very Peculiar Practice".

Admittedly not a good year for "Doctor Who", the decade itself did give us "The Caves of Androzani", "Revelation of the Daleks" and "The Curse of Fenric".

Cinema gave SF fans "Blade Runner" and "The Terminator" while TV gave us the seemingly forgotten "Star Cops" in '87!

Pop music, on the fringes, saw the rise of The Cocteau Twins and The Sugarcubes introducing us to Bjork!

5:15 am  
Blogger Stuart Douglas said...

I actually bought 'A Very Peculiar Practice' on DVD a month or so back and couldn't for the life of me figure out why I liked it so much way back when. Now I think of it though, 1985 gave us 'Edge of Darkness', one of the all-time great thrillers.

And I've never watched the DVD of 'Star Cops' which currently sits gathering dusk on my bookshelves - is it any good?

10:24 am  
Blogger TimeWarden said...

It's a while since I last watched it but, at the time, "Star Cops" was described as "Bergerac" in space, the script editor being Chris Boucher. Like the early episodes of "Blakes 7", it introduces each of the regular characters week by week. As it only ran for 9 episodes though, nobody got the chance to be that regular!

It would've been 10 episodes but for a BBC strike. 4 of them are directed by Graeme Harper (it was his fifth episode that was cancelled) so, considering his latest contribution to "Doctor Who" is but weeks away, now might be a good time to watch his "Star Cops" episodes!

1:52 am  
Blogger Stuart Douglas said...

Well, we've finally finished watching Season 3 of 'Survivors' (and what a drag some of those episodes turned out to be), so maybe now is a good time for digging Star Cops out.

12:53 pm  

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