Top Ten Things That Make Your Life as a Reader/Book Blogger Easier

Tuesday, August 20, 2013


This week's Top Ten from The Broke and the Bookish asks Top Ten Things that make your Life as a Reader/Book Blogger Easier. Here are a few of my favorites!

1) LibraryThing.com – Oh how I love thee! I joined in 2006 and have catalogued and reviewed my books on LT ever since. I keep track of what I own, what’s recommended, what’s loaned and what I’ve read each year.

2) Paperbackswap.com – As soon as I hear about a new book I want to read I add it to my wish list on PBS. Sometimes I cave and buy it before it’s available or get it from the library, but other times I’m willing to wait until a copy is up. I couldn’t afford half the books I own if it wasn’t for PBS.

3) Indy Reads Books – This incredible bookstore has only been around for a year, but I am so in love with it. All the proceeds (100%) support literacy in Indianapolis. They host community events all the time and have a great used book selection.

4) Voice Memos app – I have this on my iPhone and I love using it to record quotes from my audiobooks.

5) My Library – I have a list of 50 books (the limit) on constant rotation at my library. I always have a stack of audiobooks at home and use my library for a lot of new books and eBooks.  

6) Half Priced Books – There are 3 in my state and I am a frequent visitor, both buying and selling books. This is also the one place everyone knows I love getting gift cards to!

7) Audiobooks – I always have at least two audiobooks going at a time; one in my car and one in my house. In the past 10 years I think my reading has become about 50% audio and 50% print. They give me the chance to read so many books I never would have gotten to.

8) Wikipedia – I use it for a quick fact check for nonfiction or historical fiction books when I’m writing reviews.

9) My kindle – It took me a LONG time to actually use my kindle regularly. Now I still tend to reach for a hardcopy first, but I use it a lot when I’m traveling and when I’m reading a huge chunkster.

10) My Clippings (option on my kindle) – I love that you can highlight lines that you read on your kindle and it saves them in a single document. I use this whenever I read an eBook to remember lines I want to include in my reviews.

Photo by moi of my library.

13 comments:

Sandy Nawrot said...

This is a fun one! Totally agree on the audios. If it weren't for audios, I'd read nothing. And just to think I only started with them maybe 6 or 8 years ago. I have no idea what I did before that. I'm intrigued at the voice memo thing. It is hard to capture quotes when you are listening...

Sarah said...

I totally love Paperbackswap! It's so handy for when I'm purging books, and for getting books I really want really cheap :)

Rita_h said...

You have some different ones that I haven't seen mentioned yet. Paperback Swap sounds cool to someone like me, who only reads print books occasionally but sometimes wants to read something older that is not in kindle. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

Brooke said...

A huge yes to wiki! I visit that site at least once for every book I read. Today I was researching the Stiltsville community in Miami!

Tiffany said...

I have never heard of paperbackswap.com. THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!

bkclubcare said...

How funny that you list LT as number 1! I probably overreacted but I just deleted my account - too overwhelmed on how to do stuff and too much to do and feeling picked on. Glad it works for you; I don't think it fits me needs really.

Kami said...

I used to be big into paperbackswap, but I kinda stopped. I should get that going again! It is a great way to get books!

Nikki Steele @ BookPairing.com said...

Fun post! I use the clippings tool on my Kindle a lot as well. Fast easy way to reference quotes!

Andi said...

The voice memos app is a GREAT idea! Gah!

JoAnn said...

I totally agree with you on audiobooks!

I'm loving my kindle more and more every day, too. The convenience is amazing, plus I seem to read much faster. Not sure if that's a function of the larger type (oh, my aging eyes!) or the device itself.

Melissa (Avid Reader) said...

Sandy - Voice memo works well for me when I'm listening to books that aren't on my phone (in my car, etc) but I haven't found a good way to record quotes from audio on my phone.

Sarah - I know, it's easier for me to justify get new books if I'm swapping them with others.

Rita_h - It's a great resource!

Brooke - I don't know what I'd do without it!

Tiffany - Enjoy!

bkclubcare - That's how I feel about GoodReads. I think different systems work better for different people.

Kami - I always have a long revolving list of books on PBS. Love it!

Nikki - I like that it allows you to keep clippings even if it's a library book that's no longer on my kindle.

Andi - I use it quite a bit to remember quotes.

JoAnn - It took me a long time to warm to it, but I've been using it a lot lately.

Ruby Scarlett said...

I've started highlighting and annotating a lot ever since I started blogging and I love the Clippings section of my Kindle too, it's so good to go back and have whole chunks of quotes to ponder that would have taken me forever to write down by hand§

Melissa (Avid Reader) said...

Ruby Scarlett - It's so nice to be able to reference lines to loved!
http://avidreader25.blogspot.com/2013/08/top-ten-things-that-make-your-life-as.html
avidreader25.blogspot.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2017-43
121747
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:FBYHLKO6URAMVZUYSZPVFWC5YAEIGXYP
<urn:uuid:357014d5-7d3c-4833-9ef4-35ad1544c179>
2017-10-18T01:59:32Z
172.217.5.225
application/xhtml+xml
sha1:M5QIKK4KTEBNASRBVS5U7IAJFRZJW7WZ
<urn:uuid:b1d5f182-5c7c-4b9a-968f-72671b78b7fd>
http://avidreader25.blogspot.com/2013/08/top-ten-things-that-make-your-life-as.html
response
<urn:uuid:e66b7c52-4b60-4ea2-b522-32d7c5fb8fe7>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-225-179-112.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2017-43
operator: Common Crawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web for October 2017
publisher: Common Crawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf