Checking Out Gale Books and Authors

Gale Books and Authors is a user-friendly resource that will show you the latest popular books as well as news from the world of books. Here's a little about how it works.

Select a genre for a list of titles to suit your preferred reading, or make an advanced search by author, title, series or keyword. This last option could be quite handy if you can’t remember what the book’s called or the author, but you know of an uncommon word in the title.

For instance, I love historical fiction set during World War II. In the Select a Genre panel I clicked on Historical Fiction, and up came a list of sub-categories. A quick scan down the list and there it was: WWII and just the kind of books I like. Seven hundred and ten, no less. I clicked on Code Name Helene by Ariel Lawhon, and found a synopsis, some simplified information in the About This Book panel, with some handy links to more books on related themes, e.g., Spies, Resistance movements, etc.

When I clicked on the “Resistance movements” link, I was offered a more refined list. If I decided to make a list of similar books, all fiction set in WWII and featuring resistance movements, it was right there in front of me.

With each title you can see Read-a-likes, available formats, as well as links to reviews. So I could make a really informed choice about whether I wanted to read this book or not.

Deciding that yes, Code Name Helene was the book for me I found I could save this information in all kinds of ways: to my Google Drive or OneDrive and a few more options I’d never heard of before. (What the heck is Noodle Tools?) I could also email the info, download it or print it.

Another bunch of options let me change the background colour of the synopsis or choose a dyslexic friendly font, make the text of the synopsis bigger or smaller or listen to a computer-generated voice reading the synopsis. You can even translate the text into another language. It’s not a comprehensive list of languages by any means, and the translation might not be accurate, according to the disclaimer – but hey, this is certainly likely to be a useful feature for some readers.

For ease of use and an attractive interface, Gale Books and Authors is a brilliant place to search for books you want to read. I’ll definitely be popping back for another look but in the meantime, I’m putting a hold on Code Name Helene at the library.

Posted by JAM

5 October 2023

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