Are you searching for a new read, more information on an author or title, or do you want to chat on-line with other readers? Try these websites for some fresh ideas. (The council is not responsible for the content or reliability of external websites.)

Book Chat

Read: Read is home to lots of discussions about books, including a virtual reading group and a Room 101 for people to banish the books they hate.

Abe Books: Check out the Book Sleuth section - an online forum where other readers can help you identify ‘that book’, when all you remember is a little bit about the plot!

Bookcrossing: Perhaps the strangest ever idea for a site?  People leave books lying around in public places, other people pick them up, and their progress is tracked online… how did it ever catch on?!  York members meet up once a month - details can be found on Yortime.

Guardian Books: The books area of the Guardian website provides up to date news, author interviews, articles, reviews, top tens, quizzes, extracts, and some very lively discussion boards including a virtual reading group.

Freely Available Online

Story: Online short stories by established authors, plus lots of information relating to short story collections, writing competitions and story events.

The Poetry Archive: A vast collection of audio recordings of poets reading their works.  Searchable by poet, poem, form and theme.  

Project Gutenberg: This site provides full text access to over 18,000 out of copyright works such as the Brontes, Dickens and Darwin. 

Information

Book Trust: This comprehensive website from the Arts Council provides book news, reviews, fact sheets for writers, advice for book groups and more.

Reading Group Guides: A useful tool for book groups – thousands of ‘book guides’ which include discussion questions to fire up your group. 

Contemporary Writers: A huge database of living writers, providing detailed information such as biographies, photographs, bibliographies and analysis.

Fantastic Fiction: An excellent resource for information – particularly useful for looking up the order of books in a series.

Recommendations

Which Book: This site asks you to specify the kind of books you enjoy, using a set of sliding scales (funny/sad, short/long, conventional/unusual etc) and then presents you with some recommendations that fit the bill. You can also search by character, plot and setting.   

Love Reading: Recommendations based on the authors you already enjoy, including opening extracts for you to try before you buy.      

Library Thing: A site where people catalogue the books they own…  which means you can have a look at what people with similar taste to you are reading.             

Younger Readers

Cool-Reads: A fantastic site for 10 to 15 year olds, run by two teenage lads in their spare time.  Thousands of reviews, split into categories like ‘fantasy worlds’ & ‘school’.

Kids Reads: Reviews, excerpts from books & author interviews to read, plus word searches and trivia quizzes to do.

Stories from the Web: If you love stories and poems this is the site for you because it’s full of them!  Also competitions, games, interviews… and you can send your own writing in to be displayed in the gallery.     

Book Trusted: Book reviews which you can search by theme and age range.  Also monthly recommendations and features such as author interviews.