TTT: Online Resources for Book Lovers!

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish and is now run by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl. Each week she will post a new Top Ten list . Everyone is welcome to join.  This week’s topic is:

Online Resources for Book Lovers

-First and foremost there’s the glaringly obvious Goodreads. I still remember finding Goodreads. I described it as Facebook for book nerds. That was almost 11 years ago. How time flies.

-KDL What’s Next was from when I started working at the library. It helps you know the order of a book series. I normally use Goodreads for this, but this is an easier option to print.

-I also learned about Fantastic Fiction when I was working at the library. It was for when Goodreads’ search engine wouldn’t bring up anything when someone searched the book and the author together. It helped a lot when I didn’t read any adult books at all.

-I added Etsy because this is where I get my bookish shirts. And all the while I’m supporting small bookish businesses. All of these things make me happy lol

-Instagram and TikTok are some social medias that I think we all use all the time. I use it for not only sharing what I’ve read or like, but also to find recommendations. TikTok has been my way to beef up my TBR lately lol

-My Google Sheets spreadsheets that I call “Our Voices.” It keeps track of all the diverse reads I read through out the year. It has a tab for each diverse aspect and the columns have all the info about the book, like title, author, audience, genre, whether or not its own voices or intersectional, and so on. I’ve been doing this for about 2 years now, and have built up quite the spreadsheet. I want to add them into a database, but I don’t really know how! (I also want to start one of these for Trigger/Content Warnings)

-Canva is a blessing in disguise. I have created many a thing for my blog, but also for work on the same app lol I have a complete file full of reader’s advisory graphics for YA books that I’ve made over the years. I even made a YA booklet for when I wasn’t at work (when I was at the branches) and they needed to know what a book was about or what was in it. I did some based on trends or holidays, just random things that people probably didn’t care about lol

-If I was a librarian who didn’t mention Libby I’d be a little ashamed. This app SAVES me on a daily. I LIVE on audiobooks in boring times lol When I’m writing a blog post I’m listening to one, when I’m working I’m listening to one, when I’m doing the laundry I’m listening to one….. They make the bad times happy! And the best way to listen to them is the Libby app!

-Novelist Plus is definitely a plus from your library, if they have it. (I’m pretty sure it costs a pretty penny lol) But since we have it, I’m going to add it. This is the type of database I aspire to make. It really is cool. There’s a place where they have like a random reader’s advisory panel where you can pick a book, there’s a place where you can mix what you like in a book and they can bring up a book just from those things you put in, there’s a place where you can look up even the smallest things, like those that have been chosen as celebrity book club picks or even those that have won awards. (And I don’t mean just the current year for either of those things!)

-I found this a while ago when I was in school getting my masters in Library Science. I was doing an assignment on Diverse books, and as it turns out, We Need Diverse Books came out with exactly what I was making, like 3 weeks after I had started on my project. I thought it was pretty cool because that meant I had a bomb idea, but I was also sad because someone else thought of it before me lol (But mine was free soooooo lol) But whether you’re using this database or mine, both are the same. There is info on each book that will tell you how its diverse, the genre it’s in, and so much more. And it has it all in one place. Such a perfect kind of database.

What about you? Have you used any of these resources? Will you try them out now that I’ve mentioned them? Let me know in the comments!