Lit picking...

LitLovers is pretty interesting, and I'm sure that some of our patrons would find it useful, but my experience with it was a "lit"tle frustrating.

It's nicely organized and has an easy to navigate site, but... for 5 of the 6 titles that I checked, they didn't actually have discussion guides. Just an "I'm sorry, the publisher didn't create any discussion questions for this book" note. Sure, the site is free, but (for our patrons, at least) so is Novelist, and when they say they have a book discussion guide for a title, they actually do have questions for that title. Access to reviews, summaries and author bios is nice, but (once again) Novelist does it just as well, and has more titles (and ways to search for those titles). OK, so Novelist doesn't have non-fiction (yet), but LitLovers doesn't actually let you search specifically for those non-fiction titles - you've got title and author and that's that.
Some of the "bonus" features are nice - the LitFoods and Icebreaker games sound like great ways to liven up a book group, and the LitCourses could be a good way to make sure that everyone in your group knows what you mean when you talk about irony. In fact, the short readings might even make for good impromptu discussions - what if you used one of those every once in a while (say around the holidays) to take the pressure off your book club members - "Hey guys, don't worry about reading the book ahead of time, we're going to read it that night!"
Oh, and what about the section on Adaptations - LitLovers lists Fight Club as one of their top ones, but they don't have a listing for the book in their discussion guides! Seriously, is that helpful?
OK, and here's the kicker - I found the site a little strange - especially the bits about the publisher not providing discussion guides, and the "buy the book" links with every title... So I looked around a little and found the "Site Authentication" page, which includes this statement: "The information for the Guides comes primarily through Barnes and Noble. LitLovers is a B&N affiliate, which gives me the rights to use information from their site about books and authors, as well as critical reviews." At this point, I'm a little irritated - because, as a librarian, I want people to know that I don't advocate that they use any particular website when they want to buy something. This site just conveniently tucks their relationship with B&N way deep into the site. If the site is a commercial site, then, please just put it out there, so I know that. The burying of that information makes it feel, well, deceptive.
I'm just not down with that.