Here we go:
1) brainpickings, which I mentioned in my last entry. It's a super cool blog. In her own words:
Book sorts will enjoy it for her frequent rumination on creativity, writing, how to be a better writer, what books to read, etc. What I especially like about brainpickings is the interdisciplinary aspect - she takes the best of the best to write about - whether that be books or not (but, of course, it frequently is books. amirite?). Today's lead article, for example, is about the successes/failures of Polaroid. Wonderful.
2) Goodreads Make an account, compare with your friends. Simple as. Great fun. You can sign in with facebook if you want to do that slightly creepy 'broadcast everything' thing. Now, internet reviewing has, quite rightly, got quite a bad press recently, thanks to the naughty behaviour of certain writers leaving positive reviews on their own books (on amazon) and negative reviews on their competitors' books. (If you want to read more about this, the wonderful whistle-blowing Jeremy Duns has no end of views on the issue.) But this site - it doesn't record what you BUY, but what you LIKE. Which is obviously the more important of the two. Here, I could go onto a rant about amazon's ''customers who liked X also looked at Y'' feature, but I won't, because it's only 7.54am and there's only so much anger a girl can take at this time in the morning. Goodreads' tagline is ''meet your next favourite book'' which is pretty sweet.
3) I know this is super obvious, but Guardian Books is easily the best newspaper section for books.
4) I am always impressed also by Stylist's book coverage. Two things:
i) The quality of content is great. It's not patronising at all, and they don't choose fluffy, silly books, thinking that's all women read. There's nothing wrong with putting a review of, say, Charles Perrault's fairy tales next to an advert for the Whistles sales, and thank god Stylist realises that. Dresses and books aren't mutually exclusive!
ii) On their website, they even have a tab for books right up at the top - it's not hidden under a 'culture' or 'lifestyle' section.
Which I think is wonderful. I can only assume they must get the hits that way (ie they track the number of clicks that it takes a visitor to the site to reach their final destination, and have decided that it's best if they put a link for books in a very obvious place) and that's a great reflection on your average Stylist reader. Also, they once did a whole edition on books, which was great.
5) I could not admire this girl's tenacity any more than I already do. A Penguin a Week. And she's studying for a PhD in the meantime! I don't know where these people find the energy.
6) For smug, self-satisfied giggles, you could do worse than Better Book Titles. It's a good one. Here are some of my favourites:
See? Pretty funny.
7) I have only recently begun to look at this site - so behind the times - but Pinterest is delightful. The idea is that you have a 'board' onto which you 'pin' images that you like - rather like a traditional cork noticeboard. You can have several boards, all themed differently. This is what mine looks like:
I think it's a great idea, for it's own sake, but it also represents a good opportunity for marketing (or self-promotion) purposes. Lots of publishers have Pinterest accounts, but it seems pretty hard initially to get the loyalty going. But I think the slow-burn rewards are probably worth it. Anyway, I like that the pictures are pretty and you can theme it according to your likes. Mine isn't totally up to date - I've read more books in 2012 than are documented there, and even with that in mind, that's a fairly skewed portrait of my reading/aesthetic taste.
There we go. That's just a few. What are your favourites?
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