Books, Readers and Beyond: #52 What to Read

1. For this exercise I choose the author Barbara Kingsolver. Some of the recommended read-alikes suggested by Novelist Plus are books by Lorna Landvik, Billie Letts, Sandra Dallas, Rachel Carson, Hannah Holmes, and Michael Pollan. I tried Fiction L Booklists but could not find a place to enter an author. I instead looked at A Sense of Place 1 Novels where the scene, the setting, or the environment is a major character because I knew I would find Kingsolver on that list and her book The Bean Trees was on the list. Even though it didn't work like Novelist Plus I like this site better because there are so many options/genres to choose from. It's very detailed and has some great lists like "Books for porching." What should I read next didn't work even though I tried it many times. Library Booklists and Bibliographies has at least 2 different lists of recommended books, many of which I have read and enjoyed including books by Jonis Agee, Charles Baxter, Gail Godwin, and Louise Erdrich. Of all the sites I looked at I would probably use Fiction L Booklists again because I really like the very detailed lists.

2. Since it's spring and she is almost in 5th grade and precocious I decided my 4th grade girl who likes animal stories would like to read Julie of the Wolves by Jean C. George which is for grade 5-6 and Star in the Storm by Joan Hiatt Harlow.
For her older brother who like ghost stories I recommend: Get that ghost to go by Catherine MacPhail and John Bellairs's Lewis Barnavelt in The whistle, the grave, and the ghost by Brad Strickland. For this assignment I used Novelist Plus.

3. For the reader who likes Dean Koontz, Novelist Plus recommends Dan Simmons and John Saul. Library Booklist recommends Peter Straub and Greg Bear.

4. For the reader who has read Alanna: The first adventure by Tamora Pierce and wants to read the other books in the series I looked at Novelist Plus. The name of the series is Song of the Lioness and the titles in that series are: In the hand of the goddess (2); The woman who rides like a man (3); and Lioness rampant (4).