Websites aimed at readers are often labors of love created by people who would really rather be reading, and so even the most promising sites come and go with unsettling rapidity. So when a site like Overbooked.org sticks around for a dozen years, it is something to celebrate. Years before metacritic or bookmarks magazine began summarizing critical consensus from the vast array of book reviews, Overbooked set out to save the reader huge amounts of time by scanning four standard professional review sources (Publisher’s Weekly, Kirkus, Booklist, and Library Journal), and pulling out just the starred (or highly recommended) titles. The resulting lists represent the cream of a decade’s worth of crops, neatly arranged into major genre categories (including selected non-fiction) – a rich field for readers to graze. Only have time for the most outstanding of titles? Check out the all stars – books that received three or more starred reviews. The site also has handy tables of forthcoming titles, a wealth of thematic booklists, and ample links. All-in-all, one of the most useful literary sites out there, period.
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