DailyLit - A Great Way to Start Your Day

I've discovered yet another reason to love the Internet: reading free and inexpensive books by email.

DailyLit has a selection of over 1000 titles to chose from, including everything from classic works of literature to non-fiction on a variety of subjects. Each entry in the catalog indicates its price (many are free) and tells you how many email installments to expect. Sign up for something that sounds good and beginning reading in minutes.

Site registration (also free) gives you access to forums for discussing the things you're reading and a place to manage your subscriptions. You can set the time, frequency and length of the installments you want to receive. And if what you're reading is too good to wait until the next scheduled installment, you can click on the link at the bottom of your most recent email to have the next installment sent to your Inbox immediately.

Check out the My DailyLit widget in the right sidebar column to see what I'm reading now.

It's All Too Much: Living a Richer Life with Less Stuff by Peter Walsh

My review

rating: 2 of 5 stars



The suggestions in this book for getting rid of useless clutter (junk mail, old receipts, clothes that don't fit, etc.) are practical, but nothing that hasn't been said before by the hundreds of other organizing gurus out there. I was a little put off by Walsh's tone and the fact that he has little sympathy for bibliophiles - I could never abide by a "buy a book, get rid of one" philosophy, nor would I want to - but I am willing to put the author's snarkiness aside and try to de-clutter things that are not part of my vast book collection.

I guess what I really need is a book that offers unique ways of organizing what you have and want to keep!


View all my reviews.

In my first post about the wonder that is the Good Reads website for bibliophiles, I mentioned that my plan was to primarily list only books that I'd read since the start of 2008. A few days ago, I decided to go ahead and list a few of my favorites that were read prior to 2008. I'm doing this because I am pretty stingy with the five-star rating and wanted to list a few of the books I've read in the past that I do consider to be worthy of that distinction. I'm also entering a few other 3 and 4 star selections that I especially enjoyed. Eventually I will probably go back and add some of the titles I remember reading in college.

Have I mentioned how much I love this site?!

Tracking My "Good Reads"

I'd heard of Good Reads before but hadn't had a chance to register for an account and play around with it until this past weekend. It's a really fun place for bibliophiles to keep a record of books they've read, books they'd like to read, and books they'd recommend to others.

It's a social networking site, so there are plenty of opportunities to build a friends list and join special interest groups of readers who are interested in everything from art to zoology. Within my first 48 hours of becoming a member, I made 7 friends and joined the YA, Banned Books, and Rory (as in Gilmore Girl) Book Club groups.

Adding books to your collection is very easy. You can search by title, author or ISBN, and pull data from sources such as Amazon. You can categorize your collection by creating "shelves" (i.e. "tags") to label and sort your titles.

I am a life long reader and couldn't begin to recreate a comprehensive collection of the books I've read over the last thirtysomething years, so I have decided to start my Good Reads collection with just the dozen or so books I've read since the start of 2008. I'm still using LibraryThing, of course, to assemble an online catalog of my entire book collection as it exists now - including things I own but haven't read (yet). While I'm working on the catalog project, I can track my current reading activity at Good Reads.