BookLikes has been in beta version for quite some time, but the website has now launched its full release. The site seems to combine different aspects of social media sites such as Tumblr and Goodreads to become a place for readers to share thoughts and reviews. BookLikes is not just limited to reviews. Users can create different posts about anything. You can also follow other users, read their posts and discover books they've read. Social site I tested the site out briefly and uploaded a review I had previously written. It really reminds me a lot of Tumblr in different ways. There are “Dashboard”...

From Boing Boing comes news of this year's Locus nominees, shared there because one of its editors, Cory Doctorow, is nominated. I am not a huge SF reader, so most of these have stayed off my radar. But if you go for that stuff, enjoy this list of good books! SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL • The Hydrogen Sonata, Iain M. Banks (Orbit US; Orbit UK) • Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance, Lois McMaster Bujold (Baen) • Caliban’s War, James S.A. Corey (Orbit US; Orbit UK) • 2312, Kim Stanley Robinson (Orbit US; Orbit UK) • Redshirts, John Scalzi (Tor; Gollancz) FANTASY NOVEL • The Killing Moon, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit US; Orbit UK) • The Drowning Girl, Caitlín R. Kiernan...

A social entrepreneurship company based in Australia, Mailbooks for Good, has recently launched a literary-minded project that combines good design and a simple but strong idea with the joy of philanthropy. The company's tagline, "Re-gift the gift of reading," does a decent job of explaining the concept. But here's the general idea, direct from the MFG website: Mailbooks For Good is an innovation in book publishing, which allows you to donate books directly to those who need it. When the books are finished, readers simply turn the covers inside out and the books become pre-paid and pre-addressed packages. Once posted they are...

It was the first day of my first college English class, and the teacher of our freshman seminar opened the discussion by announcing that, in this class, we were going to read only books written by women authors. My first thought was that that seemed to be a rather arbitrary and meaningless distinction. Then she asked us to stop and think over the books we had read in our recent high school English classes. I mentally ran through the list. I was stunned. They were all male. And I hadn’t even noticed! This moment many years ago marked the beginning of...

Tumblr has millions of active users, creating 90 million new posts a day. There are informative sites, funny sites and reflective sites. Throughout the years, some of Tumblr’s sites have become so popular some have even gotten book deals – well, 70, to be exact. Tumblr CEO David Karp revealed that number at the paidContent Live event earlier this month. “What’s even more interesting to me than people going through traditional paths are people who are using those new emerging platforms,” he said. “What’s so exciting to me about Tumblr as a media network today is this new generation of creative commercialization...

  The image above (also linked to here) has been making the social media rounds lately. Not much to say about it other than "I agree." It reminds me of a documentary the Beloved and I have been watching on Netflix this week about a man who left the Neo-Nazi community and is trying to start his life over again. One of the things that disillusioned him about that community was the hypocrisy—the leaders would preach that they were doing whatever they did "for the children," but the rate of domestic violence in that community was staggeringly high. What this picture is...

Two stories crossed my inbox this morning on the rise of the fudnraiser book. The first was a review about an anthology called Orange Karen that was conceived as a fundraiser for author Karen DeLabar, who is recovering from a battle with toxic shock syndrome. Fellow authors, both amateur and professional, contributed to the book, with the proceeds going to fund her medical expenses and recovery efforts. Meanwhile, numerous sites (including MediaBistro, where I read the news) are reporting about sci-fi author Dave Wolverton (aka Dave Farland) whose teenage son has been injured in a sports accident. There is no specific fundraiser...

We've watched with interest as a few new digital publishing-related startups have launched seemingly out of the blue over the past few weeks. Thin Reads, a fantastic new website that runs reviews of e-singles, is definitely one of our favorites, and we're clearly not alone; the site has been enjoying a ton of mostly glowing press. (Click to see what Mashable, Paid Content, and MediaBistro's GalleyCat have to say about the new site.) But there's another interesting and brand-new startup known as Blackstrap that hasn't been getting quite as much love lately. In fact, we hadn't even heard of it until we...

According to an Associated Press report that was filed less than three hours ago today, the travel publishing pioneer Arthur Frommer "said Wednesday that he has reacquired rights to his travel guidebook brand from Google, and that he intends to resume publishing Frommer guidebooks." Back on the 22nd of March, we reported on the news that Google had decided to cease publishing all print editions of the Frommer's travel guidebooks, which it had acquired just seven months earlier from Wiley, the previous owner of the brand. Now, it appears as if Arthur Frommer himself—a true trailblazer in the travel guidebook industry—has somehow...

We all love stories. For many of us, it's why we read, whether on paper or in electrons. But what are the most meaningful stories? For many of us, we love stories about our past, our families, and where we came from. StoryWorth is a start-up that aims to make telling, reading and keeping those stories easier. I really like the idea behind it. It's all done via email. You can send questions to your loved ones, or StoryWorth will create and send questions. The recipient answers the question, and StoryWorth stores it and turns it into an online book. It's private. Only...

Here's an interesting story from one of my favorite financial writers, Gail Vaz-Oxlade. The Beloved and I are devotees of her 'jar' system for budgeting, and my diligence at applying her simple financial planning 'rules' helped me pay off my student loan and simultaneously save over $10,000 in my retirement account in four years. She also has several popular TV shows that are quite entertaining. But, as Gail explains in this blog post, most of her books have only thus far been available in Canada; her American publisher was concerned that her new book, Money Rules, needed a different 'spin' as a...

Every year, at around this time, I do a big e-book purge. Something about March Break brings out the spring cleaning demon, and when I need a break from cleaning my physical home, I curl up with my Macbook and tackle my digital one. My goals in years past have been to clean up metadata and cover art, complete missing series runs and prune out the freebies I really didn't ever plan to read. My goal this year? Reduce, reduce, reduce! I simply have too many books in my to-read pile. I don't remember where all of them came from, and I...