Cure for indecision

All this time I've been relying on other people's recommendations to seek out new books (despite the large number of books that I buy, I will only very rarely buy one about which I've heard nothing) when instead I should have gone to whichbook.net. It allows you to define your parameters for the next book you want to read according to mood, style, plot, character and location, and will then present you with a list to choose from, each choice accompanied by a short list of similar books and a short extract. (And I do mean short - I don't think one paragraph is really enough to judge writing style by.) Better yet, it's linked to a database of UK libraries, and will tell you how many copies your nearest library has should you want to borrow it.

I haven't tested it very extensively yet, but I did try picking specific books and trying to get the right result from the search criteria - for Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials I asked for "Extremely Larger than life" and "Extremely Beautiful" ("Larger than life/Down to earth" and "Beautiful/Disgusting" being two of the categories you can pick) and bingo, Northern Lights came up as the top match. Although conversely Wild Swans failed to come up under the search terms of "Character: female, asian; Plot: generations; Location: China", which was slightly worrying.

Anyway, the next time I run out of books to read (probably about 2005), I'll give it a look.