Good Reads

Last night I learned of another fabulous site. Good reads.

You can put together lists of what you have read, what you want to read, what you are busy reading, or create your own listing. What's so great about that? You can invite your friends or meet people there.

Once you locate a person you may like to make friends with you can view all their "shelves" (the lists I mentioned before.) If that's not enough for you, you can also compare your lists and ratings with other members when you view their profiles.

Here is the profile link for myself (currently public - may switch to private at some later time.)

Good reads - is what your friends are reading!

Book Mooch

Book Mooch is another Netflix-esque site for bookworms.

The site provides the means to trade and receive books costing you only the price of shipping. There is also a sort of rewards point system. For every book you are finished with and ready to give away you earn a tenth of a point and get one point when you give a book away. Each point is redeemable for one book that's been offered on the site by another user. For every three books you receive, you have to give one away, just to keep the system going. If a book you want isn't in the database yet, put it on your wish list and you'll be notified by email when it comes in!

Recently finished:
Wicked
Gregory Maguire

Emma Volume 6
Kaoru Mori

King Lear (Graphic Shakespeare) (Shakespeare Graphic Library)
William Shakespeare

BookFlix

Netflix. A gift to so many of us. Personally I'm on the 6-at-a-time plan.

There's an old joke that goes "An Irish man walks out of a bar"

Well - a bibliophile walks out of a bookstore
a bibliophile logs on to Amazon

If you're like me you more than understood that. Recently my stuck-up self was coerced into visiting thrift stores and Goodwill. Nothing against them but I prefer to get my own stink into my things. This past weekend I learned that you can get books in thrift shops for bewteen 50 cents and 2 dollars.

For a bibliomaniac this is still not enough.

I PRESENT NEXTFLIX FOR BOOKS!

Bookswim features plans for about $20 (there are no late fees) or a 5-At-A-Time Plan for $23.99 (they claim that's their most popular plan but honestly, who has time to read 5 books a month?!). They have a selection of more than 150,000 books including new releases, bestsellers and classics and an easy queue to showcase and store upcoming titles. Just like Netflix, you get free shipping both ways and you can opt to purchase titles you love at a discount. read more

While the selection is smaller than other web stores like Amazon, the idea that you can rent and share books is really exciting and certainly cost effective. The site is new and has received a great deal of attention in the last few weeks, so you may experience technical difficulties on the site from time to time.

http://www.bookswim.com/index.html

Thanks to dumpster diving on GeekSugar for this info.

While you're at it check out http://www.swaptree.com/ (for those of us who have Netflix and STILL go to Blockbuster)

Read or Die

Not just a motto for the bibliophile. R.O.D. (read or die) is an awesome anime series featuring secret agent, super hero librarians.

Thanks to Netflix:
In this animated sci-fi thriller, Yomiko Readman is a library special operations agent who must foil an evil genius's world destruction plot. Paper is the weapon of choice for a brilliant madman who's discovered a secret Beethoven manuscript that, when played, causes suicidal behavior. To help him locate the deadly composition, the maniac has cloned some of history's most interesting characters. Now, it's up to our bookish heroine to stop him.

I don't know about you but I find this far more exciting than when TATU was introduced to the world as Russian lesbian songstresses that dress as school girls.