Help me find a great webpage for literary reviews.

January 4, 2011 11:44 AM

I'm looking for a good website for literary reviews. My dream webpage would be something like an IMDB for books, with ratings, reviews, genre listings, and author information. Does such a thing exist? Are there any really good blogs for literature reviews? Thanks in advance.
posted by Stagger Lee to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (10 answers total)

Metacritic used to do book review aggregation, but discontinued that. While it doesn't do everything you're asking for, Bookmarks Magazine has freely available archives (looks like the most recent two issues are not available). You can probably get the most current two issues through your local public library.
posted by cog_nate at 11:53 AM on January 4, 2011

Best answer: Goodreads is what you want--most modern authors have pages on there, there are reviews and ratings. Genre listings aren't great, but their shelving system works in a pinch.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 12:03 PM on January 4, 2011 [1 favorite]

It depends what type of literature you like. The Complete Review is excellent at compiling reviews, but also at reviewing. They rarely review best sellers, for instance, and have a conscious focus on serious literature.
posted by OmieWise at 12:41 PM on January 4, 2011

You can find out what is wrong with most books by reading the Amazon Reviews from worst to best. If there are a lot of reviews, skip the one star ratings and go to the two star. I read a lot of books and nearly every time I find something I do not like I go to the Amazon Reviews page and one of the low-raters has nailed it.
posted by bukvich at 1:08 PM on January 4, 2011

Best answer: librarything also does this - it's more for author/edition information than reviews as opposed to goodreads.
posted by smoke at 1:54 PM on January 4, 2011

Omnivore isn't imdb-esque but has links to lots of in-depth book reviews, although again mostly from the academic-interest side of things.
posted by blucevalo at 5:18 PM on January 4, 2011

Worldcat.org has author/edition/subject heading info and aggregates reviews from Goodreads.

Google Books also has author/edition/subject heading info, aggregates reviews from Goodreads, provides web pages references, word clouds, etc. I think they recently added a "My Library" feature too, if you're into lists.

Openlibrary is the open source version of the two above. There are no reviews though.
posted by jyorraku at 9:14 PM on January 4, 2011

Best answer: I very much like The Complete Review, although it's not an exhaustive source like IMDB - it's more of a "Rotten Tomatoes" for lit, since it gives snippets of (high-quality) reviews and has a rating system.

You might also try the very intelligent and approachable Fiction Writers Review, as well as Open Letters Monthly.
posted by Paris Elk at 7:53 AM on January 5, 2011

Whoops, sorry, I see that OmieWise beat me to it!
posted by Paris Elk at 7:54 AM on January 5, 2011

Response by poster: Thanks everyone!
posted by Stagger Lee at 8:30 AM on January 5, 2011