Books: Is there something like IMDB for books?

For movies or TV series, and now even web series, there's IMDB or rottentomatoes.com. But I was wondering: is there something like those sites, but for books?

The only comparable things I can think of, is the ratings on Amazon. Those aren't really that good, however, because Amazon doesn't sell all books available, and especially foreign books aren't listed there. Also, it is not independent. Now I'm not saying IMDB is a completely independent source, but you get the Idea, I'd guess.

So, is there something like this available? I must have missed it completely, the only book rating sites, are quite small projects, if they actually lived past a few years...

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Permalink Reply by int 80h on January 7, 2014 at 11:38am

Thanks. First thing I've seen is the login section, which was a bit of a turnoff, because I had the impression I cannot have a quick look on a book review before logging in.

I was wrong.

Not sure which of those two I like better, though.

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K-ModPermalink Reply by Gumbo V2.0 on January 6, 2014 at 5:04pm

Back in my day it was called the CARD CATALOG at my local library

The US Library of Congress lists every book ever to receive a copy right in the US, but it only includes title, author, date, publisher information. Here is the link to their card catalog tool http://catalog.loc.gov/

Looks like there have been several attempts to start a non-commercial database, but I just don't think they can hold any "market share" against the big boys like Amazon or Barnes & Noble

http://iblist.com/

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Permalink Reply by int 80h on January 7, 2014 at 11:31am

Hmm, well, iblist.com is a nice idea, but the website seems to be thrown together over a weekend. Which is a little sad, I think. I like how they doing Bayesian estimate ratings, with the little graph etc.

However, I don't think you can compare them to Amazon or B&N, those are stores, I am looking for something that does ratings and reviews - or collects them, if not doing them themselves.

The websites Moosepig suggested are going to the right way, if anythings there's one things missing: Extra ratings for translations.

It's quite interesting, actually: I've read Solaris by Stanisław Lem in the original Polish, the German translation and the English translation - all are different (apart from being written in a different language, duh...).

Oh, and if you're planning to watch the movie with George Clooney: Don't. They completely change lots and lots of things, almost turning the whole story on its head.

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K-ModPermalink Reply by Gumbo V2.0 on January 7, 2014 at 11:44am

I don't know how much cruising you did on the site. It looks like it has potential, but not sure how many are actually contributing to the content. Here is a link to the author page for Stanislaw Lem, and I did notice that SOLARIS is one of his titles that has its own discussion page which has received 31 ratings thus far (7.9 out of 10) http://www.iblist.com/author330.htm