Evaluating websites

Bibliotravel is managed by two people who give us short autobiographies (could all be made up of course!) they both have websites separate from Bibliotravel, but the only contact is via email. The latest review added was Jan 10 so this site is refreshed and current.
Weread has a very long Terms of use clause and the anonymous editors control content to a degree. The only way of contacting them is through email. The FAQ tells me that weRead is part of Ugenie Inc which was incorporated as a for-profit in 2006. Both these sites are formed by community contributions, so that content may be erratic and all opinion!

authors perspective

By far and away the best of these sites is Bookbrowse. It has hundreds of authors (as usual stong American bias and low/nil NZ content) aqnd all the authors that I found are still living. the biog. appear to have been written by the autors themselves. It has some podcasts of author interviews but also written interviews which I find more concise and appealing. The podcast I watched (the beginning of anyway) was of Hilary Mantel, author of "Wolf Hall" It has book summaries and reviews by many reviewers. A one stop shop for info on contemporary authors!
Good for rounding out picture of book's geneisis and to satisfy nosiness about the author's origins. I will use this for myself and for patrons.

Readers and booklovers

Bibliotravel is a great idea! but only 20 NZ set books. A project for this new year to raise our country's profile a bit? Book divas looked promising but the site was down every time I looked at it. Weread also appealed, I like the mix of plot summeries and emotive repsonses, both good and bad from several people. It was a bit heavy on Harry Potter though. I entered 'The life of Pi' to get recommendations of similar books. It did bring up seven books that I've read and really liked and a couple of ones that might be good, but also Shakespeare and children's books. I couldn't see the connection with 'Pi' or a likeness between them except that they all were 'quality' books. An element of randomness here?