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Book Reviews | Books Online | Events and Chat areas | Shopping| Publishers
What about book-reading?
As we tentatively enter the digital age, the book-reading habits of children and adults are a social concern. After all, books have played an important role not only in spreading the idea of democracy but in connecting us to new ideas beyond our local experience.
Although our society is being dramatically influenced by electronic culture, the impact of our oldest mass medium -- the book -- remains immense.
Books survive challenges
Books and reading have survived the challenge of visual and digital culture. Developments such as word processing, books on tape children's pictorial literature and online computer services have integrated aspects of print and electronic culture in our daily lives. Most of these new forms carry on the legacy of books-- transcending geographic borders to provide personal stories, world history, and general knowledge to all who can read.
Given our increasing channels of specialized media, people are able to zero in on their own interests. Books however, are one medium that takes us in other directions. Since the early days of the printing press, books have helped us to understand ideas and customs outside our own experience.
Does the Web work for books?
Some argue that the book cannot be replaced by the new media; other maintain that the new media expand our scope, and truly open us to those cultures and customs and ideas by giving us the opportunity to interact with people from around the world. Books will not soon become obsolete. The Web enhances the reading experience by informing us of new releases, giving us the opportunity to talk to an author, a publisher, the subject of a book or to talk to others who share our reading interests and/or concerns regardless of where they live.
Book Reviews
Book reviews have long been a staple in our lives in helping us determine what to read. Sometimes the reviews are in newspapers or magazines, sometimes it's a reference from a friend or family member. Reviews of all types are available on the Web; chat rooms and special interest areas can expand our circle of critics. The two main online booksellers, Amazon and Barnes and Noble, also include reviews and recommendations on their sites. Amazon lets you add your own reviews for books you've read, as well as read what others have written. After you enter a list of your likes, Barnes and Noble has a service that will browse other members' lists and produce a list of recommendations for you.- Bestsellers lists: Chronicle of Higher Education | Publishers Weekly
- New York Review of Books
- New York Times Book Review
- Los Angeles Times Book Review
- Chicago Tribune Includes a monthly online book club.
- Book Review Corner You can add your own reviews to this site.
- Book Radio
- The Barcelona Review This online magazine is aimed at those interested in "international cutting-edge fiction in English/Spanish bilingual format." It includes original short fiction, poetry, interviews, and book reviews.
- Indolink Book Reviews Reviews of books by mainly Indian and Indo-American authors, with some popular American stuff thrown in.
- Children's Book Review Magazine
- SmartBooks Go here for reviews of computer-related books, as well as news on computers and the Internet.
- BookWire contains dozens of review journals and columns, as well as a schedule for author appearances across the country, and links to hundreds of publishers and booksellers.
- Search for zines that address books at John Labovitz's e-zine list.
Other Resources
Books Online
You can access entire books online if they were published before 1900. Following are some sites that contain many books online. The best way to use these sites is for high-powered searches of certain recurring concepts or phrases in a given book.
- American Literary Classics They include 16 books, and will send you a chapter a day of an American novel of their choice.
- Project Gutenberg This site gives you access to hundreds of etexts in both "light" and "heavy" literature, as well as reference books.
- Internet Public Library lists over 5,500 titles.
- The University of Virginia's Electronic Text Center provides not only searchable text of hundreds of holdings from their library, but also digital images of the original documents. Many of its holdings are restricted to users from the University of Virginia or affiliated schools, but it is impressive to see how libraries are converting their paper holdings.
Event and Chat Areas
Several Browsers and on-line services offer special events or opportunities to enter into a "live" conversation with an author or publisher, sometimes these can include readings of poetry or of excerpts from a book.
Most services and browsers also offer bulletin boards where you can post comments or pose questions on a specific topic or show, and chat areas where you can enter into live conversations with other people from around the world, in a discussion of new and upcoming releases, conversations with authors, works in progress. You may just want to enter a chat areas to discuss a book you've read or to "listen" to what others think about a book you are thinking of reading. Some of these include:
- DejaNews is a search engine for newsgroups. As with a Web search engine, entering keywords will return links to newsgroup articles that contain your keyword.
- Liszt, the mailing list directory, is a guide to a wide variety of mailing lists (complete with instructions on how to join them).
Shopping
Shopping on the Internet has been promoted as a quick and easy way to shop for yourself or to take care of holiday shopping. While the various networks, film studios and radio stations have shopping areas (some of which offer books, notably PBS), "stores" that sell books over the internet are growing. From the major booksellers you can preview new books, have discussions with authors. The Amazon Associates program allows anyone with a Web site that discusses books to link directly to that book's page on the Amazon site--if the visitor buys the book, the owner of the site that recommended the book gets a commission.
- Amazon
- Book Stacks Unlimited
- Barnes and Noble
- Borders Books & Music
- BookWire Find out about booksellers in your area.
- Bookshelf gives you access to rare and out-of-print books.
Publishers
The Web sites of publishing houses are utilized as a means of sefl-promotion; while they may look different, the content is similar: new and upcoming releases, book tours, authors' appearances and book signings, book store events and so on. This is not to say they are not informative. What may be of interest is to note the variety of areas the publishing company has an interest in: college text books, magazines, music, and so on.
- Publishers on the WebFrom BookWire, this list gives you a description of each publisher as well as a link to the site, in 18 different categories.
- St. Martin's PressLook at some of the other sites we've developed to accompany other textbooks.
- Tor Books Go here for science fiction books.
- Alfred A. KnopfIncludes special offers, news releases, and some discussion sites tied to specific books.
- Allen & Unwin Australian publishers of general trade, academic, childrens, and military books.
- Chronicle Books of San FranciscoPublishers of art, architecture, photography and pop culture books.
- Henry Holt & Co Hardcover and paperback books for adults and children.
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Try it out! |
Since this list is nowhere near exhaustive, do some searching and create your own bookmarks of sites including: