If you love reading, you’ll really love Shepherd

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Shepherd is an innovative site to explore if you’re looking for something to read. It’s a new approach which uses authors to recommend their favourite books, thus creating a vast library of recommendations. Whatever you’re interested in, fiction or non-fiction, just type the topic into their search and it will suggest some lists that might interest you. For example, if you search for veganism, it suggests –

  • The best books about vegan travel
  • The best vegan health books
  • The best vegetarian cookbooks for easy and delicious meals
  • The best and most recent books about yoga and Ayurveda
  • The best books about conscious plant-based cookery

So you never know what you’re going to find 😀 Each one of the Best Books lists has been written by an author who will recommend their own book and five others by different authors which fit under that heading.

But that’s not all. The search for veganism also triggers suggestions of other bookshelves:

The best books about …

Veganism
Japan
Minimalism
Pizza
The Amazon Rainforest

photo by Veronika Andrews of pixabay.com

On the other hand, you might search for an author or a specific book. If you search for The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder, the results give you five different Best Books lists which include it, and suggests bookshelves about The American Frontier, Europe, Jewish History, The Roman Empire, and Preschool. I know why The American Frontier came up, and Preschool, but I wonder why those other subjects did 😀

It can be so hard to find something you want to read because you don’t always know what you’re looking for. Shepherd gets it! Their unique library system gives you access to a diverse range of recommendations that you might not otherwise have discovered.

I was thrilled to be asked to write a Shepherd page and mine is called The best books for children which are also loved by adults. Check it out – see what I recommended! 😀 And share it as well, if you don’t mind 😉

photo by Hermann Kollinger of Pixabay.com

28 thoughts on “If you love reading, you’ll really love Shepherd”

  2. Congrats on the page, Violet, and thank you for sharing this with us!

    I especially like that it asks “authors to recommend their favourite books” -too bad this wasn’t around when Octavia Butler was still among us!

    Shira

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

    • Again you have introduced me to someone new, and Octavia Butler sounds very interesting indeed although I’m a little afraid to try her stories as they sound like they might be depressing and I can’t cope with depressing fiction. What do you think?

      Liked by 3 people

      Reply

      • I’m afraid to try Samuel Richardson for the same reason. I’ve read good things about his stories, apparently they have kindness in them, but they all sound sad, full of kidnapping, torment and deception. And unrequited love. 😮

        Liked by 3 people

        Reply

        • Hi, Miranda! 🙂
          Hmm, not familiar with this author, but others, like Octavia, or even the later Harry Potter books, offer tools for dealing with and overcoming the problems seen in these books, or even ways of protesting when all else fails, as with the book (which I do NOT recommend for you, but illustrates my point) https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1376449236 Karine Giébel
          presents a story of kidnapping and torment, but one that shows the effects of PTSD, and even a way for a victim to fight back against an unjust system, in the end. So, yes, stories can be terrifying, but show new tools, through those scenes, which could only be understood in the context of the horror one has survived. Kind of like why I am committed to Project Do Better.

          Shira

          Liked by 2 people

      • Well, a bit like my serial Ann & Anna, they often start out seeming to be depressing, but always have hopeful or uplifting solutions and endings.

        Personally, I think you should try to start with Kindred, as it is one of her most popular early (and shorter) works, and ends (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/889354678 ) with the protagonist taking her own power into her own hands. It may seem ‘depressing’ at first, but looking at it from an ‘ultimate power’ perspective, I found them all, starting with this one, quite uplifting. My personal favorite is the Xenogenesis series, but that starts off very apparently-depressing, and may not be for you, for starters.

        Liked by 1 person

        Reply

      • That reminds me! Violet, I think you’ll love the Ants series (at least the first book or two), by Bernard Weber/Werber, I forget: my review of the first one is coming up tomorrow on my blog. I never imagined being able to have empathy for an ant to that point, but this series did that for me!!
        I’m dying to see your thoughts on my review, and if you get to read the book(s), them, too!

        Liked by 1 person

        Reply

        • You’re most welcome, Violet! Hey, I just read of a lady doing a Walk to End Youth Homelessness in the UK, if you know of this? Sounds similar to the pilgrimage I’d like to plan in the US later?

          Liked by 2 people

        • I’ve never understood sponsored things like this. Why don’t people get sponsored to do something useful like cleaning up litter? Then they would be raising awareness and money while actually doing something practical at the same time 🙂

          Liked by 1 person

        • I guess that’s why I want to plan my pilgrimage for when I’m ready to leave California for NY, anyway! 🙂 More practical, for me, at least! But I agree with you that sponsoring for a useful activity would be better. I suspect that useful things like that are less interesting, or something, since long-distance walks/cycling/runs, etc, seem to get more attention?

          Liked by 1 person

        • Although, come to think of it, my pilgrimage will not be to raise money, but to find volunteers for Project Do Better, so I won’t be asking for funding, except in terms of people willing to host me overnight as I pass through various places on my walk to the east coast.

          Liked by 1 person

        • Well, that depends on who you ask, actually: people have been getting so confrontational here, that alot of incredible things have happened, like attacks on folks just wearing masks out in public.
          😦

          A lot of people are feeling unsafe, due to our fellow Americans.

          Like

        • No idea, but it is happening alot here in the States (can’t really call us United…), sadly. Now you see why I’ve been wanting to leave? It was bad back in 2004, when I was called unpatriotic and invited to leave the country, even by ‘friends’ back then, but now it is much, much worse.
          😦

          Liked by 2 people

        • Yep. Even some friends and family members were well mad at me, back then, as the need for Arabic & Pashtun speakers went out, and everyone faulted me for refusing to go work for the CIA/DoD/NSA or even the FBI, due to my talent for languages (both learning them and getting the accent right). Problem is, it was already widely known that women, specifically women who could pass for Arab, like myself, were being used to break down prisoners during interrogations with ‘harsh’ methods, and the interpreters were key to this process. My cousin was already at the State Department, and also urging me to join for similar reasons, as a Foreign Service Officer. Problem is that what she endured in her first years, having to turn away good people wanting to come to the USA for economic reasons, would have killed me in short order, and it I’d had to help in those interrogations, I’d have had to kill myself rather than obey such orders. Same reasons I got kicked out of the Naval Academy: I cited the Nuremburg trials as reason for quoting the entire part of the code of conduct, requiring us to obey all lawful orders, when my upperclassmen spoke of obeying orders. As you can imagine, this did not go over well, and several of them made it their mission to get rid of me. But a true patriot tries to live up to the ideals of the Constitution, starting with our founding document, the US Declaration of Independence (on the basis of which, btw, the Massachusetts Bay Colony immediately abolished slavery upon becoming a state/commonwealth):

          “We hold these truths to be self evident: that all men are created equal. That they are endowed by their creator with certain inalianable rights…”

          Those beautiful words must be lived up to, and it is the job of any US patriot to hold our country to those words.

          Liked by 2 people

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