JCPL Teens

What Should I Read Next?

It’s easy to come up with new ideas once you know how. Let me tell you about four different techniques. First think about a book or two that you’ve read before and really enjoyed. Let’s take Catching Fire as an example. Use the library catalog and search by title for Catching Fire. After you click on the title, scroll down the page until you see the heading, You Might Also Like These. The library catalog suggests other series, other titles and other authors that you may enjoy if you liked Catching Fire and it even tells you why that book, author or series is recommended. For Catching Fire, the catalog recommends the Chaos Walking Series, the Uglies and Unwind. You could read why that book was recommended and then click on one of the titles like Unwind and scroll down the page again for more recommendations. Read-alikes for Unwind include the House of Scorpion and Sapphique – all good choices!

Technique number two is to use a library database called NoveList Plus. NoveList Plus is the best resource we have for learning more about a particular book, author or genre as well as getting rock solid reading recommendations. If we try an author search in NoveList Plus, say for Suzanne Collins, we will see a link of other author and book suggestions. NoveList Plus is a powerful tool and there are many different ways to search it. Play around with it and/or stop by the library to have someone walk you through using it. This database can be accessed outside of the library if you have a library card. Go to our A-Z list of Databases, click on the letter N and then click on NoveList Plus. At this point you will be prompted to enter your name and library card number.

Technique number three – fill out a Personalized Reading Recommendation and let us do the work for you! We’ll email you several suggestions!

Technique number four – come talk to us! I guarantee that finding books for you to read is our favorite thing to do! Try the catalog and NoveList Plus and let me know what you searched for and what new recommendations or ideas for additional reading you found.