I led the book club at our branch for several years. It was OK. I read books I might not normally have read, but it's not really my thing. I enjoy reading, but not necessarily discussing books.
I had joined LibraryThing before the first iHCPL and GoodReads during iHCPL. There just doesn't seem to be enough time to keep up with everything. Shelfari looks like another version of these. Again, it's fun to list some books online, but discussion just isn't my thing.
We have a book club at our branch. Trying to find a book by theme for our Asian Pacific Heritage month has been a challenge. I was using ReadingGroupChoices and ReadingGroupGuides and when I found a possible book, either HCPL didn't own the book or didn't own enough copies. I finally found a title by an author that was on ReadingGroupGuides, Street of a Thousand Blossoms by Gail Tsukiyama. I don't know if we will use the book, but it is a possibility. Trying to use Firestorm by Iris Johansen didn't work, it wasn't in either of the book club sites.
It would probably work better starting with some of their lists rather than having a book and then looking to see if they have reviewed it.
I looked for Firestorm on LibraryThing, where it had 2 reviews, average rating of 3.76 and on GoodReads where it had 23 reviews and 4.02 average rating. So it was liked fairly well.
I don't think I would join any of the virtual book clubs. I just don't care for other people choosing what I would read and then discussing it. I read for pleasure and most of what I read doesn't show up on discussion sites.
Showing posts with label reading. Show all posts
Showing posts with label reading. Show all posts
Friday, February 20, 2009
Books, Readers and Beyond: Finding Books Online
Looking for bookstores in Humble, of course we have Barnes & Noble and Half-Price Books, two of my favorite stops. After those, it's mostly Christian or Children's bookstores or they are further away than what I would shop. There is a used bookstore in Humble, but I have to admit I've never been there. Barnes & Noble, online big time, Half-Price Books, just lists where they are, no way to search inventory.
Looking for the children's book, Stealing Thunder by Mary Casanova, I found it on B&N for $5.99 with no problems. Same price on Amazon with a selection of used books listed. I didn't find it as an audio book, checked HCPL, Audible, Books on Tape, Recorded Books, and Audiobooks.com. These are the most popular distributors and if they didn't have it, then I don't think it has been recorded.
When I checked adult authors, such as John Saul, I found books on our page and Audible to be downloaded and other places to buy. Popular authors can be found many places to download. I checked on Firestorm by Iris Johansen and we have it in an abridged CD and online, unabridged. It is also available through Audible.
I have an online used book site I like, it's BookCloseouts.com. It's mostly remainders and seconds, but it's great to browse and has good prices and great sales. You can also have it notify you if you are looking for something and it comes in to them. Otherwise, it's a great site to browse.
Just browsing some of the remainders and out of print stores is fun. I have a children's author I usually check for just to see if they have some of her books and the prices. AbeBooks has some copies as does Books-A-Million. Powell's Books also has some copies. I've been to Powell's and that's just amazing to browse.
Trading books online just isn't something that appeals to me. If anything, I would sell them at Half Price books or something.
Looking at some of the free sites, it's amazing what all is out there. I found a couple of places I might want to visit more and maybe do some downloading.
OK. As far as downloading one of our ebooks, I couldn't do it on my work pc. The software isn't there and I/we can't download it. So I used my personal laptop. It took 2 hours to find a way to download and install the Adobe Digital Editions. Their website wanted Flash installed, which I did multiple times, followed their and our help screens and it still wouldn't install. Finally found a page in Adobe's support that let me manually install ADE. At that point it finally let me get it installed and then download the book from our site. I don't know how many of the public would have the patience or know how to do all of this. I found it extremely!! frustrating to do this. Will now read the book.
I did a little reading before lunch. My laptop has a shiny screen which is always a little annoying, but with a book, it is distracting because it shows everything behind me. Also, it's not real light to hold in my lap. All in all, would rather read from a book. Also went to WOWIO, which was one of the sites from the original iHCPL. It lets you use its own reader, there is nothing to download. It works fairly well on the pc, but again, you are reading from the pc and are trapped in front of it. If I had a Kindle or it's equivalent, it might be better, but a computer just isn't comfortable to read in front of or carry around.
Looking for the children's book, Stealing Thunder by Mary Casanova, I found it on B&N for $5.99 with no problems. Same price on Amazon with a selection of used books listed. I didn't find it as an audio book, checked HCPL, Audible, Books on Tape, Recorded Books, and Audiobooks.com. These are the most popular distributors and if they didn't have it, then I don't think it has been recorded.
When I checked adult authors, such as John Saul, I found books on our page and Audible to be downloaded and other places to buy. Popular authors can be found many places to download. I checked on Firestorm by Iris Johansen and we have it in an abridged CD and online, unabridged. It is also available through Audible.
I have an online used book site I like, it's BookCloseouts.com. It's mostly remainders and seconds, but it's great to browse and has good prices and great sales. You can also have it notify you if you are looking for something and it comes in to them. Otherwise, it's a great site to browse.
Just browsing some of the remainders and out of print stores is fun. I have a children's author I usually check for just to see if they have some of her books and the prices. AbeBooks has some copies as does Books-A-Million. Powell's Books also has some copies. I've been to Powell's and that's just amazing to browse.
Trading books online just isn't something that appeals to me. If anything, I would sell them at Half Price books or something.
Looking at some of the free sites, it's amazing what all is out there. I found a couple of places I might want to visit more and maybe do some downloading.
OK. As far as downloading one of our ebooks, I couldn't do it on my work pc. The software isn't there and I/we can't download it. So I used my personal laptop. It took 2 hours to find a way to download and install the Adobe Digital Editions. Their website wanted Flash installed, which I did multiple times, followed their and our help screens and it still wouldn't install. Finally found a page in Adobe's support that let me manually install ADE. At that point it finally let me get it installed and then download the book from our site. I don't know how many of the public would have the patience or know how to do all of this. I found it extremely!! frustrating to do this. Will now read the book.
I did a little reading before lunch. My laptop has a shiny screen which is always a little annoying, but with a book, it is distracting because it shows everything behind me. Also, it's not real light to hold in my lap. All in all, would rather read from a book. Also went to WOWIO, which was one of the sites from the original iHCPL. It lets you use its own reader, there is nothing to download. It works fairly well on the pc, but again, you are reading from the pc and are trapped in front of it. If I had a Kindle or it's equivalent, it might be better, but a computer just isn't comfortable to read in front of or carry around.
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