Thing 20: Books 2.0

Seriously?! This was the Thing without end! Man, it took forever to look at those sites! (No, I didn't do ALL of them, but I did do one from each category, which was enough!) So here's a breakdown of the sites I visited and what I thought about them.

Daily Lit - I really liked this site. I actually signed up to get the Picture of Dorian Grey sent via email (in 96 installments!). I got the first installment this morning, and am quite happy. It was a little short, but there was a link at the bottom of the email where you could get the next part if you wanted to keep reading. They're almost all older books - ones that aren't protected under copyright anymore - but they did advertise Cross Country by James Patterson as one you could get for about $10. Not too shabby. This may be a good resource for some school's required reading.

Book Lamp - Good concept - I love Pandora! Why not one for books? It turned out that there was not enough of a range of books. You could only pick from about 50 in a drop-down menu, and they all appeared to be action or scifi. The thing that really bothered me was that they actually listed the titles starting with "The". Hello?! Clearly not someone who has ever worked at a library.

Reading Trails - Interesting. Basically book lists that anyone can post. Someone actually made one "Books to Read While Breastfeeding" - the books were neither about babies nor breastfeeding. Strange. I can see the appeal though. There were other trail on post-apocalyptic reading, or art for preschoolers. Basically just a way for people to make and share reading lists.

Visual Bookshelf on Facebook - As I had said in the post about Library Thing, I already use this. They are two very similar things, but Vis automatically loads anything any of your friends are reading, you don't have to find and add them.

Book Glutton - This site is similar to Daily Lit, in that you can read books online. This one has where you can upload books to share, join groups, and possibly chat to others online while you are reading. I don't really want to join another site, but I may change my mind.

LibriVox - This seems like a really cool site. I would love to volunteer to read! Maybe it could lead to a career in reading for audio books! This, like the others, has the older copyright-free books. One feature I really like though, is that they have audio in all sorts of languages.

BookBrowse - A bit snobby/elitist? This is a site that is supposed to only review books that are worth reading - books that you take something from the experience, rather than pure entertainment. I suppose it cuts out the crap, so maybe that's not a bad thing. Unfortunately you have to be a paying member to use some of the features.

ICLD - Super cool! Kid's books online - and from recognizable authors! Again, a great feature is that this has books in other languages too. It's no good if you don't read those languages, because there is no translation, but it could be a resource for some of our ESOL families.

Book Swim - Cool concept, though I already have something like that for free - the library. (It seemed a bit pricey for me) But good for books we don't have, esp. textbooks. I'm going to have to tell my sister about renting textbooks - it would save her so much money!

I do worry that the internet is robbing people of their concentration, but I think the nytimes article had some good points. As seen above, there are all sorts of wonderful websites that can supplement reading. In fact, the internet may be getting kids more interested in reading and writing through fan fiction sites. I mean, the reading online isn't any worse than reading a magazine - at least they're still reading, right? I don't think anything is going to take the place of physical books anytime soon, but who knows?