Going Social

Riffle is a new social book site to help people discover new books to read. I tried to take a look, but it wanted me to sign in with either Facebook or Twitter, neither of which I wanted to do. However, a quote from Publishers Weekly suggesting it could be a Pinterest for discovering new books was a bit of a turnoff. Another book discovery site is Bookish. The publishing industry is up-in-arms about Amazon buying GoodReads, so expect more of these types of sites to pop up as publishers look for more alternatives, even creating their own.

If that sort of thing is your thing, you might want to give it a look, but I'll stick with LibraryThing. I'm more interested in keeping track of my books than finding more. I have many other ways to find good books to read.

Booked by 3: October, My Answers

At least, I'm answering before the month is over. ;)

1. Do you have favorite sites for getting book info? Share 3 (or more!).

• Bookslut
• MediaBistro GalleyCat
• BookWire
  

2. How about favorite author sites? Share 3 (or more).

• Minette Walters has a very nice site. I get her emailed newsletter, too.
• Barry Eisler has a great site, and it's got a lot of information on things other than his books.
• Michael Marshall Smith is one of my favorite authors.
• Other nice author sites include: Neil Gaiman, Lawrence Block, and Jonathan Lethem.

3. And finally, are there 3 or more book review blogs you never miss reading? And no, you don't have to name this one! :)

• This is hard, in that I'd hate to leave anyone out, so just look over in the sidebar.

About Library Thing

Library Thing is for cataloging one's library. So my collection there will reflect not my reading, but the books I'm keeping. Which means all the reviews/stars will be fairly high as I do not keep books I don't like. And it won't reflect my actual reading. I'll still need my online and offline journals for that.

So, anyone else using Library Thing?

Book Browsing Better than Ever

HarperCollins lets you Browse Inside the Book. Not unlike Amazon's Look Inside feature. However, in what is a really cool feature, you can now get a Browse Inside the Book widget that will allow you to browse inside an HC book anywhere online. There's a detailed FAQs section. What's really nice is that some authors have already loaded it onto their sites to make it easy for readers to take a peek at their books to help them decide if they want to read it. This is something I hope we see more of, and for other publishers to do. Along with Amazon and Google previews of books, this will make browsing books online almost like going to a bookstore. Note that I said almost. I can't think of anything quite taking the place of actually holding and flipping through a physical book. ;)