Newly Launched IDreamBooks.com Tells You What's Worth Reading
What I love about the internet (besides cats and porn) is that if there's a need for something, somebody somewhere is going to sit down and create it. To put it more poetically, we turn to Vanilla Ice: "If there was a problem, yo, I'll solve it." Rahul Simha saw a problem: There were sites like RottenTomatoes.com and MetaCritic.com where he could go to see the average of film, television, and music reviews, but no such thing for books. So like the Ice Man, yo, he solved it. That solution is IDreamBooks.com, a site that launched publicly today.
The site aggregates reviews from critics to give each book a rating and corresponding icon. Books rated 70% positive or better get a blue smiley cloud icon; anything below that and it's frowny rain cloud time. The reviews come from established critics, and there's currently no way for the average user to add a book review. Based on some of the reviews on Amazon, maybe that's a good thing.
You can sort books by genre, rating, most-reviewed, or release date in order to discover the next item on your reading list. There's a demo video, but I'm not going to embed it because it's just screenshots of the site with John Mayer wailing on top. You can check out the site for yourself and see the same stuff sans Mayer. Play some adult contemporary while you browse if you're into that kind of thing.
IDreamBooks is brand-new, so I can forgive the fact that some genres don't have many books yet and that their back catalogue of older books isn't what it should be. It might be a handy way to find new authors.
Could you see yourself using this to find new reading material?
News by Kimberly Turner
Kimberly Turner is an internet entrepreneur, DJ, editor, beekeeper, linguist, traveler, and writer. This either makes her exceptionally well-rounded or slightly crazy; it’s hard to say which. She spent a decade as a journalist and magazine editor in Australia and the U.S. and is now working (very, very slowly) on her first novel. She holds a B.A. in Creative Writing and an M.A. in Applied Linguistics and lives in Atlanta, Georgia, with her husband, two cats, ten fish, and roughly 60,000 bees.
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Comments
I prefer to spend hours in a bookstore, navigating uncategorized stacks, reading the first few chapters of dozens of books before finding the one book that strikes my literary mood of that moment in time. No website could ever compete with that.
I'm not sure I'd like to give up browsing in a bookstore for nothing in particular. And I'm really not sure I could base my purchases on what book critics bless. Still, worth a look-see.
Really wish RedLetterMedia would write some Half-in-the-bag type book reviews.
At first, I read "What I love about the internet (besides cat porn)..." I was dissapointed when I reread the sentence.
But I can't wait to check out the website.
I rather trust the critic reviews than user reviews .Good idea, wish they add readometer for users too. The layout is clear, concise and visually stunning!
I always go to a bookstore to find new books, but thanks to technology I can look up a book's review and see if it's good if I'm not 100% sure. There's so much crap to wade through in a bookstore. I have a feeling this site will be good.
Totally clicked the video to hear the John Mayer. I love his guitar solos. Then they cheated me by stopping the video in the middle of it...
Just recently started reading books. It was easy to make my first list of books to read. I believe it gets harder from now. Looks like this site can help me find new books unless i attain nirvana before i finish my first list.
sounds interesting. will it hurt the little guys the authors with small presses? if they don't get reviews from "critics" they won't be on there. that seems like a shame. but i'm off to check it out. maybe it'll end up pushing smaller presses and authors to get "real" critical reviews.
This sounds like a very good way of stunting literature even further: muting the few truly good critics out there and letting the great mass of Professional People Who Have Very Intereresting Opinions agree with each other about books nobody has difficulty agreeing on.