I'd like to introduce you to my friend Alexander Christou. Xander, as he likes to be called, is eleven years old and one of the smartest kids I know. He’s a passionate reader, a great soccer player, speaks Greek (his father is from Greece), and is a more engaging, interesting conversationalist than some adults I know! Xander blogs about what he reads from his home in Austin, Texas, where he lives with his parents: Karen, an artist, and Christos, a designer. He’s a huge fan and supporter of Austin’s great indie bookstore, BookPeople, and he's in touch with Topher Bradfield, their Children's Outreach Coordinator...

DBW featured a press release for BookLikes, a new social reading platform that is supposed to combine the features of Tumblr and Goodreads. I consider one of my roles here is to involve trying things out, and potentially wasting my time so you don't have to waste your. And my reaction to this site? Don't even bother. (Click here to see what TeleRead's Susan Lulgjuraj has to say about BookLikes.) Everyone seems to be wanting to get into the social reading space today, and honestly, I don't think we need yet another one. Especially not one that acts so much like Goodreads....

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”...

By Michael Weinstein There’s been a great deal of conjecture lately about the future of the bookstore: What will happen to the B&N stores (especially if they do plan to reduce the number of stores)? What about independent bookstores? Will Amazon crush bricks-and-mortar stores out of existence? Oh, lordy, will there even be such a thing as a bookstore!?!? Not surprisingly, this all made me think of a song. Under time pressure to have a song for the first Earth Day concert in 1970, the great Tom Paxton created the gold standard for songs about ecology when he wrote “Whose Garden Was...

What News Organizations are Learning from their eBook Efforts (Poynter) News organizations have responded to changes in readers’ habits by moving beyond the newsstand and toward the bookshelf, zeroing in on ebooks as a new revenue source and a way to explore genres not typically found on front pages or home pages. Back to the Future: What if the Mass Media Era was Just an Accident of History? (Paid Content) We are used to thinking of a “mass media” market made up of large newspapers and TV networks as the normal state of affairs in media, but what if that was just a...

I hope you'll pardon me as I jog my ocean air- and sun-addled brain back into something resembling normal functioning with a story from my just-ended honeymoon. On Saturday, my newly minted wife and I got back from Tulum, Mexico, where we spent a week on the beach relaxing and—if we're being completely honest—recovering from the exhausting, months-long process of planning and throwing, as a friend described it, the biggest party we'll ever throw. In anticipation of this rare week-long block of reading time (electricity is limited in Tulum and, as a result, so, gloriously, are televisions), I'd loaded up my Nook...

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...

Thorin Klosowski poses an interesting question over at Lifehacker: Are phones good productivity tools? Klosowski argues that, for almost every productivity task he needs to accomplish, there is a desktop or tablet app that will do it quicker and more efficiently than his phone. "None of this is to say that I don't appreciate a smartphone for what it is," he hastily reassures us. "I still take pictures all the time, I listen to podcasts, dink around on Twitter, and look up oddball questions in the browser. But none of those things are actually productive." I suppose that for me, it all comes...

Attention library advocates in Alexandria, Va.: Talking points for the local budget debate are here. Leaving us in the dark about the source of this tidbit, a Washington Post headline in the Style section blog says: “Alexandria, Virginia: the most well-read city in America.” Similar words show up elsewhere in the media about my hometown, the oft-paradoxical Washington suburb of some 146,000 where a bronze Confederate soldier stands in the middle of Washington Street despite an African-American mayor and a generally progressive city council. Alas, however, our number one ranking isn’t based on actual books and other items read per capita. Rather our spot at the top reflects what the Post accurately mentions in the...

I had to write about this since the number 1 spot was taken by my neighboring city, Alexandria, Va., and the 18th was also a Virginia city, Richmond, where my son is in school. Go VA! Here's the complete list, compiled by Amazon, and based on sales numbers of books, newspapers and magazines, both print and electronic, since June 2o12. 1. Alexandria, Va. 2. Knoxville, Tenn. 3. Miami, Fla. 4. Cambridge, Mass. 5. Orlando, Fla. 6. Ann Arbor, Mich. 7. Berkeley, Calif. 8. Cincinnati, Ohio 9. Columbia, S.C. 10. Pittsburgh, Penn. 11. St. Louis, Mo. 12. Salt Lake City, Utah 13. Seattle, Wash. 14. Vancouver, Wash. 15. Gainesville, Fla. 16. Atlanta, Ga. 17. Dayton, Ohio 18. Richmond, Va. 19. Clearwater, Fla. 20....

By Christina Jones Pocket has added a few new feature for its users. Before, you could share your saved articles to social networks like Facebook and Twitter, as well as through e-mail. Now you can share articles along with a personal comment and highlighted quote to other Pocket users, sending them push notifications and an e-mail about it. You can also view archives of where and who you sent articles to directly in the app. The Send to Friend update is the latest overhaul since Pocket re-branded itself from its Read it Later namesake. The new feature is a reflection of the...

Happy Earth Day, everyone! Here at school, we are having a book exchange where students can bring in an old book and swap it for a new one. We're also having a litter-free lunch day and asking students and staff to bring all their lunches and snacks in reusable containers. And we're not the only ones celebrating Earth Day here—the Kindle Daily Deal features four kids books in honor of Earth Day. But it does not feature any adult choices. So with that in mind, I scoured the Kindle store in search of Earth-themed goodies. Happy reading!   No Impact Man by Colin Beavan...