Recommend me

[blahbloodyblah]

As in 'can you recommend me a book'.

It sounds so clunky. Is 'recommend me' the correct way of shortening 'please can you recommend a book for me to read'?

Thought you pedants would know!

I'd just say "please can you recommend a book?". The "for me" is implied unless you specify you're looking for a recommendation on behalf of a third party.

"recommend me" has entered into normal usage because of confusion between the various sentence patterns after recommend I think.

He recommended me for the job (recommend somebody for something)
He recommended a book to/for me/He recommended (that) I read the book. (recommend something to somebody)

In your sentence the speaker means sentence 2, but uses the grammar pattern of sentence 1.

Gramatically it's the same as "can you give me a book". It's one of those rare occasions when English pretends (or, depending on your point of view, actually has) a dative case, so fun for pedants.