Located at 9200 113th St North - Seminole, FL 33772 - (727) 394-6905		 Seminole Library's Online Guide to Books & Literature

Reader's Advisory (book reviews, online book stores and book recommendations)

Oprah's Book Club  Need we say more? Lists all the books Oprah has recomended with brief summaries and information about the authors.

The New York Times Book Review Current issue, back issues to January 5, 1997 and an archive of reviews from 1996 

The Booklist Center. Maintained by a retired librarian this is huge directory (321 lists in 67 categories) of award winning and recommended books. If you want to find out what the Joint Chiefs of Staff recommends or what were the best selling books for children thirty years ago this is the place to go. 

Amazon.com. The famous Internet bookstore also has links to reviews, reader comments and guides to books on related or similar subjects. Now offers music on compact disks in all formats. 

barnesandnoble.com.  The "other" online bookseller. Besides having one of the largest selections of current titles, this site is an excellent source for obtaining out of print books. 

Bookwire. Information source for the book industry with links to several review journals and author sites. 

Bibliofind Links to over 1600 booksellers selling more than 5,000,000, old, rare or used books.

Arts & LettersDaily.  A fun site for the literary and artistically inclined. A grab bag of essays and articles on writers and literary topics with links to online newspapers, magazines and book reviews. 

AllReaders.com. This site lets you search novels by particular criteria; genre, plot character, setting, style or theme. Over 10,000 novels are in the database which can be searched by using over 2,000 different criteria. 
 


Guides to Children's & Young Adult Literature & Local School Reading Lists


The Lexile Framework. Database for Lexile. Lets you search specific titles to determine their Lexile level

Awards and Notable Books Page. Directory of home pages of the major children's book awards; also American Library 
Association Notable Books for children. 
Children's Literature on the Web. Award winners, recommended books and other resources related to books for children and young adults. 

Award Winning Books. A comprehensive list of book awards in all  major categories. Most links provide lists of all the books getting a particularl award from its inception to the present time. (Site added June 5, 1999) 

ATN Book Lists Suggested Reading.  Mainly focused on K-12 (but there are lists of interest to adult readers, too), these are lists of books, both fiction and non-fiction in a large number of categories, such as award winners, school subjects, genre (this is very diverse with topics ranging from gardening to underwear), themes, values and books targeted to specific types of readers. Professional literature is also listed. 

Carol Hurst's Children's Literature Site. Reviews of  children's books indexed by theme, grade level and author;  information about children's authors; curriculum material, suggestions for using books in the class room and professional information. Also has lesson plans and display ideas. 

Anne Frank Online. Includes an illustrated biography of Anne Frank and excerpts from her diary. Other links may be added shortly to this site. 

Children's Picture Book Database at Miami University. Searchable by controlled list of topics this database allows you to identify picture books by theme, topic, concepts or skills. Contains abstracts for 4000 picture books 
 

Pinellas County School Reading Lists.

Pinellas County Schools Elementary Suggested At Home Reading List

Middle and High School Suggested Reading List..
 
 
 

 

BookBrowser A collection of fiction reading lists and reviews for genre fiction (mysteries, science fiction, westerns, romance, historical, etc.) By no means a comprehensive source (there are some glaring omissions in the Science Fiction series), it also has links to prize winning books, forthcoming books, authors' home pages, and other reader resources. 

The Romance Reader. "The very lastest news and views of romance novels." Offers 2,000 candid, signed reviews of romance fiction, arranaged by category (historical, contemporary, fantasy, etc.) 

The Mystery Reader.  From the same folks who produce The Romance Reader An online collection of mystery book reviews and news. 

ChaptersGlobe.com  Web site of Canada's largest online bookstore, one of the best bookstores in North America. Offers over 2,000,000 titles, including many not found in the United States. 

BookBrowser. "BookBrowser is a site dedicated to reading. We offer fiction reading lists, book reviews, forthcoming titles, author information and much more. We made BookBrowser to help avid fiction readers and authors find each other.The heart of BookBrowser is the Reading Lists section. Here we list Series and Sequels in "story" order which is not always the publishing order. Titles are linked to reviews when available." 

 

Literature and Literary Criticism Sites(and author biographical information)

An Outline of American Literature.  A chronological detailed outline of American Literature from the colonial period to the current. Encyclopedia Britannica's review states: "Discusses (within each period) movements, authors, different schools and genres, and more. Each page is a well thought-out essay, with the cumulative result being an excellent introduction to the field of American literature " 

Literary Resources on the Net

The Mining Company Guide to Authors. The link to classic American Author sites is especially noteworthy 

Voice of the Shuttle: English Literature Main Page

"Broad based, fully searchable directory of resources for the study of English and American literature. Contains separate lists of links for each major literary period, including Anglo-Saxon, medieval, Renaissance, Restoration, Romantic, Victorian, modern, and contemporary. 

"The Voice of the Shuttle" provides not only extensive links to works in English and American literature but also links covering minority literature, several other types of literature written in English, creative writing, theory, cultural studies, and textual analysis. A section on literature by genre catalogs links related to the study of drama and theater, fiction writing, and poetry and includes links to courses for each. A general resource section offers links to comprehensive text archives, pages for English and comparative literature departments, course syllabi and teaching materials, journals, general criticism, newsgroups, and conferences" [Encyclopedia Britannica Internet Guide Review] 

Online Literary Criticism Collection.  This service of the Internet Public Library has critical and biographical web sites for over 1,000 authors and their works.  For each work or author there is a directory or relevant web sites with complete descriptions.  The site is indexed by author's last name, by title, and by literary period.  Also provided are links to two other directories of literary criticism: 
The Online Criticism Guide, and the Pathfinder to Literary Criticism which explains how to find critical sources on the World Wide Web and in your own library. 

American Studies Hypertexts.  The University of Virgina provides online access to complete hypertext versions of major works in American literature and history. The texts are often accompanied with links to other information sources, both online and in print. (Site added June 17, 1998)

The Psychedelic 60's: Literary Tradition and Social Change. Created by the University of Virgina Library's Special Collection Department, this site gives background information on the major literary figures of the 1960's, besides information on major cultural icons of that period. Includes images from an exhibit on the 60's which may bring back memories "be they happy, sad,or addled." 
 

Mr William Shakespeare and the Internet.  A comprehensive annotated guide to Internet resources for the life and works of William Shakespeare, including chronological, biographical and critical material. Also links to online versions of Shakespeare's works.  Emphasis is on scholarly resources for Shakespeare studies. Other links cover Shakespeare's Theater and  Renaissance literature. 

Poetry Archives. Large collection of classic poems. Searchable by author or title. Other search features will be added in the near future. 

Author's Calendar. Created by a public library in Finland, this site offers brief biographies of approximately 1000 authors, primarily from the twentieth and nineteenth centuries. The biographies include and list of the author's major works. Mainly European and American authors. 

American Authors.  One of several  literary web sources presented by Donna Campbell of Gonzaga University's Department of English. This site is a directory of information sources dealing with works and lives of American authors from the sixteenth century to the present. Professor Campbell also offers a site devoted to literary movements in American literature such as naturalism, realism or  transcendentalism 

Twentieth Century Authors Biographic and Bibliographic is just a click a way. One of the subject guides to the Web produced by the Association of College and Research Libraries. Created December 1999. 
 

Online and E-Book links
The Online Books Page.  Created and maintained by John Mark Ockerbloom and his colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania's Digital Library, this is directory of  over 12,000 complete books in English available over the Web. Titles can be searched by title and author, or can be browsed by Library of Congress subject heading. All these titles are freely available to anybody! 

Tampa Bay Library Consortium E-Book Collection. 
To borrow E-books you must first create an account at NetLibrary on a computer at one of the participating libraries. Once you've created your account at a library computer you will be able to "check out" electronic books "owned" by your library from any computer with Internet  access.