Sunday, May 31, 2009

Shelfari!

Okay, so I joined Shelfari today, and I love it! How fun! As you can see, I have my self posted to the left. It is displaying books that I have read.

When you start an account, you search for books categorizing them as "Books I've read," "Books I want to read," or "Book I am currently reading." Then you can add a rating (5 stars is the best), and create your shelf.

It's a great networking tool as well, though. If you go up to Explore, you can find groups with similar book interests, join discussions about books, and find books by tags, authors, or subjects. I like exploring the most popular so I can see books I may not ordinarily find.

I like the feature where you can ask for a book suggestion so people can recommend books to you according to what is on your shelf.

This can be very helpful for me! I always forget my (everlasting) list of books I want to read. This will help me keep up!

Happy reading!
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Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Digital Booktalks

I'm a visual person so I love movies! Being able to see something really gets me interested in it. That's why I love Digital Booktalks. I've also heard them called book trailers since they are so similar to a movie trailer.

This particular site was created by the University of Central Florida. Their mission is "Creating a community of avid readers, one video at a time." These are booktalks that were created by students at the university. Just click on Browse Books to see a list of all they have to offer.

I've used the one for House of the Scorpion and Esperanza Rising with some classes. The one for Deep and Dark and Dangerous is really good, too!

I'd love to have some of our students create some book trailers....now all I have to do is scrounge up some flip video cameras and some creative minds!
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Sunday, May 24, 2009

If you like... then try...

The first question that I ask when people request a book suggestion is, "What have you read before that you really like?" One of my favorite online resources, Scholastic Book Wizard, does the same thing. Using the Book Alike feature, you can put in a book that you've enjoyed and it will suggest books that are similar, according to the tags. It will give you a picture of the covers, and a brief description of each suggestion. I LOVE this! On the side, you can narrow your search by interest level, reading level, topic, and genre.

On the same site, there is a List Exchange. You can create your own lists (once you've registered) and see what other people have created. This is a great way to get a list of books about a certain subject. My favorite part, though is the lists by Authors, Experts and Celebrities. There are lists by Rick Riordan (I'll definitely be steering my Percy Jackson fans that way), Karen Hesse, Rodman Philbrick, Nancy Keane (booktalk extraordinaire), and Sonja Cole (host of Bookwink).

Here are links to some of my favorites....
Happy reading!
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