Pick books according to how you feel on the Love for Livres platform

Simply click on the tab 'search by emotion' on Love for Livres and a scale appears, composed of six emotions: love, fear, anger, sadness, surprise and joy. Depending on your mood, you can launch a search. Photo: AFP

Love for Livres (Love for Books) is a website that uses a search engine that suggests books according to your mood and emotions of the moment.

Because among its many virtues, reading helps us manage our emotions. It can also help us combat stress and improve our capacities of memory and attention. Choose a book according to your feelings.

Love for Livres offers users suggestions in a format that is both original and useful. The platform, available in French and English and launched in December 2019, offers the user a selection of works based on their emotions.

Simply click on the tab "search by emotion'' and a scale appears, composed of six emotions: love, fear, anger, sadness, surprise and joy. Depending on your mood, you can launch a search.

For the more exacting users, other criteria are also proposed, such as the season, the reading time and the price.

A screen shot of recommended selections on the Love for Livres platform.

Each book is accompanied by an image of its jacket with a key emotion indicator provided by the book. Under the summary, the site adds information on the reading time, as well as the seasonality of the book and the optimal time or occasion to read it, such as on a trip or before bed.

Created by Céline Mas, a former literary agent, this platform aims to bring readers and books closer together and to make books more accessible. But that's not the only objective. Studies have shown that reading books is beneficial for mental health.

Emotions brought out through reading help combat stress, stimulate cognitive functions by up to 30%, and facilitates memory and attention capacities, the site outlines. They also promote empathy.

Because books have a capacity to heal. This idea is called bibliotherapy, and it is even used in some hospitals. One of its pioneering advocates in the US in the early 20th century was Sadie Peterson Delaney.

The head librarian at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Tuskegee, Alabama used reading to help African-American veterans traumatised by World War I. Today, this adjunctive therapy is used to help people who are isolated, undergoing social rehabilitation, or still traumatised by the Covid-19 pandemic. - AFP Relaxnews

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