Book Recs for Gamers!

I've been doing a lot of research lately on libraries and gaming for an event Al and I are going to propose and stumbled over this. Recommended reading for gamers. I haven't checked to see how many of these titles we have, but it's a great starting point for us to help those parents of teens who say, "He just doesn't like to read!" Sometimes it's all about finding the right subject.

Anna Campbell and Another Cool R.A. Tool

Hey, if you're a Regency freak, you should head over to Title Magic today where romance author Anna Campbell talks about her long road to publication and how writing contests got here there. And she's giving away a signed copy of her new book, Untouched, to the person whose comment she likes the best!

And Library Person discovered What Should I Read Next while slogging through del.ic.ious this morning! It's a U.K. site that takes its users' lists of favorite books and uses them to create reading suggestions. Seems like it works a little bit like Library Thing, but it's a little simpler to navigate. The search bar is right there in the front.

After 24 Things, or w00t!

So, did you guys hear that Miriam Webster's #1 word of the year is w00t? W00t. W00t?! Okay, I admit, I use this word on a regular basis because I play World of Warcraft with Morgan and my brother and future sister-in-law and a bunch of friends. You pwn an Orc, you yell w00t. That's just what you do. But #1 word of the year? I don't know how I feel about that. I mean, I really don't use the word in everyday conversation. I'm sure some people do, but I guess I'm part of the old crusty era of gamers who prefer to use old and crusty English in real life. It makes me wonder when we'll officially be changing the spelling of the word "you're" to "ur."

So, even though I'm done with the 24 Things, I don't think I want to let this blog go dark yet. Right now, I'm just writing for myself and whichever 24 Things participants found me interesting enough to actually read what I thought, but, as we go forward and integrate more web 2.0 tools into our jobs, our blogs just might have just enough potential to become a little something more. You never know!

Thing #24, or Done!

You know, I'm usually not a smug person. But when this program was introduced to us at Staff Development Day, I figured it would be a rehash of all of the technology I used anyway and that I'd breeze right through it. Boy, was I wrong! I think my prior knowledge helped a little, but most of the time I was learning right along with everyone else and having a great time.

In addition to the Things, I learned that I wasn't utilizing the technology I did use to its fullest extent. I was ignorant of how wide the world of podcasts really was. I had no idea what a wiki could really do. RSS feeds save me so much free time now! And although there are some tools I don't see myself ever using again, *glancing sideways at technorati* just knowing about them has enriched my knowledge base. I know I have them as resources if ever I need them. And that's a good thing.

Not only did I enjoy the contents of the program, I'm also thankful it came along when it did. The universe has a way of smooshing things together when I need those things simultaneously. And now that I find myself in the position of having to self promote, both during and after the contest (Dead Chessie comes out in June!), I have more tools at my disposal. Funny how things work out.

I would love to see another program like this in future. Not just on technology tools, but on other things that would help us in the course of our everyday work. A L2.0 style program might help us a little with cross training when we can't always leave our positions to work in other areas.

Thanks, Jerianne, for putting this one together. You rock!

Thing #23

Before this Thing I usually just used podcasts related to sites that I was already visiting. Like NPR's podcasts and online archives and Holly Lisle's podcasts on writing. I'd never used a podcast directory before. I found that I enjoyed Podcast Alley the most purely for aesthetic reasons. I got a lot of the same results from the different directory searches.

I added Holly's podcast and one I found called The Kissy Bits: Romance Writing Without Cooties. Figured I could learn something about the industry now that the Anna books are considered paranormal romance.

I was really surprised at the sheer amount of podcasts and the wide range of subjects. For some reason I had it in my head that podcasts were for techy people on obscure subjects or for music aficionados. But there are cooking podcasts, and booky podcasts, and political podcasts. I don't know that I'm ready to create one of my own. Nobody wants to listen to my weird, high, girlie voice! :-) Maybe I could talk Morgan the Telecommunications Superhero into broadcasting for me if I have something to say in that medium.

Oh! I almost forgot! I was searching for short story markets right before I started this Thing and found Escape Pod. They pay $100.00 for SF stories to be narrated and turned into podcasts. They maintain sister sites for Horror and Fantasy as well. They actively look for stories that are quick in pace and aren't overly wordy or description heavy so that they'll sound good in audio format, which is the kind of spec fic I like to read in print anyway. Anyone who enjoys audio books and speculative fiction should try 'em out!

Thing #22

I love READS! I usually use it for e-books, but that's another post (as I learned the first time I tried to write about this Thing!:-)

READS does two things. It allows our patrons to use us when we're closed, when they're on the go, or when they can't come to us. Anecdotally, READS has been a big hit with several Smyrna patrons. I have a stay-at-home mom who actually jumped up and down and squealed when I told her about the service (to the chagrin of the elderly lady standing behind her). And every time she and her children come in, she tells me how much she enjoys it. One of my audio patrons, who was notorious for extreme late fines and forgetting to return discs and cassettes with cases, now almost exclusively uses READS. It's made his life a lot more convenient. Not many of our truck drivers have made the switch yet. Most of them still have cassette players in their big rigs. But I have a feeling that'll change when they become comfortable with MP3 technology and personal FM radio transmitters. I'm working on it!

READS also fleshes out our audiobook collection quite nicely. Audiobooks can cost anywhere between $20.00-$140.00. Working within a budget means I'm not always able to order everything our patrons will want. So I take care of the certain-to-be high demand items and the essential items first, and after that, I can pick and choose what to fill our collection with. If READS or another branch already owns a title I'm considering, I feel pretty confident to choose something else on my list, knowing that I can refer our patrons to READS.

I tell patrons that, once you have overdrive installed, browsing READS and checking out books is as easy as shopping on Amazon. Only instead of your credit card information, you enter your library card number. And READS has an amazing selection! Just browsing the new additions list I saw I Am America and So Can You, The 47th Samurai, A Lick of Frost, and Eat, Pray, Love (which I've been recommending to patrons after I heard the author do a reading on NPR, months before Oprah! But I'm not bitter.)

Thing #21

I love Bob Ross. I don't even paint, but I love him! He's so wacky, and his outlook on art seems so pure compared to the stereotypical blocked, agonized, tortured writer or painter. Art doesn't have to come from pain. It can. But it doesn't have to for it to be real.

Speaking of art from pain, my hubby gets a kick out of James the Nintendo Nerd. JtNN rants and raves as he works his way through difficult levels, critiquing the games as he plays them. His frustration and creative use of profanity is hilarious. But if you're easily offended by language, you might want to give him a miss.

I can see us using online video to do a variety of things. Like offering select storytimes online. That way non-patrons could see the wonderful things that Sandy and Sherry offer for kids here at Smyrna. And children who are sick, and shouldn't come to storytime and expose everyone, can stay home and still enjoy the program.

It might also be fun to try a Reading Rainbow style book presentation for kids, adults, and YA. We could feature staff picks this way as well as invite patrons to participate. It might be a thrill to see them online, and we could showcase some of the good stuff in our collection. It's another way to handsell.

Thing #20

I think I'm in an organizational mood this week. I chose Backpack to explore.

I was impressed with its simplicity. It looks like it's designed to work like a spiral-bound notebook, only more organized. You can add pictures, links, documents, and check-off lists to a single page. There's a fantastic looking calendar there as well, but you have to be a paying member to utilize it.

Backpack is a great example of a 2.0 tool that probably wouldn't work well for us. The calendar is shareable. But so are our Outlook calendars. The pages are sharable, but we have our wiki and our server. But for personal use, or for work projects one wouldn't need to share with others, this would be a great way to keep organized. And it's something we can recommend to our patrons who want to keep track of their reading but don't like the social aspects of LibraryThing.

I was pretty psyched to see Pandora on there! Again, this is probably not a very good example of library-related 2.0 tools, but it's one that I've used for a couple years after our legendary Sam strong armed me into trying it. (I'm gonna get an F on this assignment!) It's like readers' advisory for music. You type in your favorite song. Or your favorite artist. And Pandora will create a playlist for you based on hundreds of different musical attributes. You listen as you work or play on your computer. If you like a song, give it a thumbs up. If you don't, thumbs down, and Pandora uses that input to further tailor your playlist. I have found so many great bands and performers this way - and it's so much more refreshing than traditional radio! No ads, minimal repeats, no managers or publicists in station pockets, no annoying DJs (unless you're annoyed with yourself.) Most definitely recommended.

Thing #19

I admit it. I have a Myspace. I resisted for years. I mocked it. I rolled my eyes. But when it came right down to it, when I needed a promotion tool, where did I go? Yeah, that's right. Hypocrite Mel.

I haven't done much in the way of spamming other's spaces to get friends. Most of my Myspace friends are my buds in real life. But there's a patron or two, some authors I really like and want to keep up with, and a couple of strangers. I'll do more with it someday. :-)

So, I went exploring. The first place I went was bookspoke. I read a little bit about it and discovered on their "if you're a writer" page, that they're also a vanity publisher. That made me think twice about joining because, chances are, their social networking site is a way to snare unpublished writers into using their services. Better to use Shelfari or LibraryThing.

I thought it was pretty spiffy that there were age-appropriate SN sites out there. I kind of wished for a thirty-something one. (Okay, I know I'm not quite there yet, but give me a few months!) Stereotypical teenagers got on my nerves back when I was one, and it's just gotten worse over the years. And so has the spelling. Gather has a more mature writing base, but a lot of people on there only post for points which can be redeemed for gift certificates and that can be just as annoying.

Facebook was interesting, but I don't know if it's really for me. I found a few high school classmates and lots of people who were at ISU when I was there who I didn't know. Facebook seemed a little cold to me, but it was refreshing not to have a bunch of ads shoved at me.

I thought it was interesting how many of the friends and comments on the library Myspace profiles came from published writers, intending, I suppose, to reach library patrons and readers through the library.

Surprisingly, I have a bit of a pessimistic streak when it comes to libraries and Myspace. I'm not too confident that we'll reach the army of teens using our computer lab to check their profiles. We have to hit a certain level of cool. Or, in other words, we have to be serving them adequately already for them to want to add us and keep track of us. I think we can do this other ways. Who I think we will reach are the non-teen Myspacers as well as local writers seeking to promote themselves to our patrons. Folks who already use us and love us. And that's something valuable. We can blog. We can post schedule changes and program announcements in bulletins. We can announce new releases and, maybe, link to ibistro.

Thing #18

Since we started L2.0, nothing has sent me into the throes of technolust faster than Zoho. When I'm at home, on my computer, I have at least five programs open at all times. Minimum. When I'm working on a book, I keep track of notes in multiple word documents and I can never locate the tidbits I need when I need them (and I'm SO not paying upward of a hundred bucks for notetaking/organizational program for writers). There's even a Zoho wiki option so you can have your own private one, or share one. I'm most excited about the Zoho Notebook. I can have separate books for separate projects or subjects and I can see them all at once in the "my books" list. No more little word documents to keep track of. And I can move pages around, shift text from page to page until the notes are in the order I want them. Shoot, I could probably outline novels this way, a page a scene.

I don't know that I'd use Zoho writer for writing the actual manuscripts, though. Although I love the idea of backing up my work online, I don't fully understand the privacy issues involved yet. One of the main concepts of online productivity is document sharing. And I don't know that I'd want to share my crappy rough drafts with people. It doesn't seem like a blog or wiki where everything you post is public. But yet, other than Zoho Wikis, I didn't see sharing options. I'll have to play around with it a little more before I'm confident enough to switch entirely.

Thing # 17

I like our wiki! Adding to it was a lot easier than I expected it would be, so I sort of went nuts and added the whole Money section to the circulation manual. It kind of gave me a giggle when PBwiki asked if I wanted it to clean up the Microsoft Word text. Because I'm a big geek that way.

I tried searching for "claims return" just to see what I'd get. My only result was the missing/damaged/lost outline. I then searched for a more general term. One that I knew was in there at least once. "Money." I got 8 results ranging from the text in the two of the check in sections, and the rest from the money sections.

I think this'll be a great way to put all of the stuff that we have scattered across the server and put it one place for everyone's reference. I know I have things that I use every day that occasionally comes in handy for someone else on staff, but most people are too considerate to go spelunking in my folder. For example, the Smyrna Gift slips we use for donations we want to catalog. Or the materials from the readers' advisory for paraprofessionals presentation I gave a few years ago. I would love to stick that on there for people to add to!

Oh, I did notice that it doesn't log you out when you close the browser. So I'll have to remember to log out beforehand.

I have a feeling, though, that the only way for us to get the staff members who aren't participating in 2.0 because they're uncomfortable with technology to use the wiki is to make the information contained in it only accessible through the wiki and nowhere else. If it's in paper form in their work area, those folks are going to use that instead, potentially using an outdated policy or form. Although, I hope they prove me wrong! We'll definitely be working on it at Smyrna! :-)

Again, I would love to see a book talk resource, and I think a wiki would work just as well as a blog would, if not better. It would be searchable, could be split up into genres and subjects, and more than one person could post their thoughts and ideas instead of being stuck with one opinion from one person in a review of a book.

Surprise!

They pimped my book cart! Or work cart. Just, you know, don't look at the stuff on top of the cart. I'm a little behind. *grin*

The shiny things on either side are chocolates, which we distributed and consumed after lunch yesterday. I really do have the best co-workers on the planet. Actually, they're less like co-workers and more family, with cheers, squabbles, and everything in between. I love you guys!

Thing # 16

Before this Thing, I had a fuzzy idea of what wikis were, but I didn't really stop to think about their applications aside from wikipedia. They always seemed too social for my personal use. Although, I'm pondering them in relation to my writing. Having a book talk wiki might be a fun promotion tool for an author. Or a writer who's trying to build name recognition pre-publication. And I don't think it's been done yet. At least not by a writer. Huh.

Oh, sorry. Tangent.

Library wikis! As far as I can see, there are two basic library wiki types. The internal staff-based one, and the external patron and staff-based one. From the examples I've seen, in the discovery resources and as well as the TLA staff development workshops at Brentwood, both types can be extremely useful in communication and resource management. I think my favorite was the subject guide wiki. Boiled down, it's like putting the book displays online for folks to access all the time, with card catalog information build right in. There were even librarian approved informational links on the same page with the books, combining print and Internet resources! *mops up drool* And when I went to the SJCPL website from the wiki, I discovered that they have a library video game club. With a blog. *sidelong glance at Al* Double Dash tournaments? DDR? I could see luring in the underserved YA population with video games, and staff could use their own equipment. The library wouldn't have to buy anything. Must file that idea for later.

Most of the wikis I found were fantastic. There were a couple, though, that I found to be lacking in cohesion. At least for my little pea brain. The Library Outreach Wiki, for example, seemed like an organized hodgepodge of things, sometimes in outline form, sometimes written out. All wikis are a work in progress, but the LOW seemed like it didn't really have a nucleus.

Because of the SJCPL subject guide wiki, I can really see how this little toy could help with readers' advisory. (Oh, come on, you knew it was coming!) I really liked the idea of the Book Lovers Wiki, but I would love to see the concept move away from reviews and more toward a conversation. I don't know if a wiki or a blog would be a better tool for that. But I'll bet we could integrate a book review wiki section to help manage our winter reading program. Just a thought. :-)

Thing #15

I grew up in a family who took the idea of "one day at a time" and turned it into a fine art, so it's always been difficult for me to look too far into the future. It's strange, then, that Dr. Schultz's article "To a Temporary Place in Time..." was the one article out of our discovery resources that caught my attention. Or, more accurately, my imagination.

Web 2.0. Library 2.0. These things aren't our future. These things are our present. Our patrons are already blogging, social networking, YouTubing, playing with pictures and Wikis, tagging and collaborating. Participating. Active. To reach them and keep them, we're going to have to learn this. We're going to have to be out there, participating with them.

Library 2.0 may be the newest way to provide services to our patrons, but it's also a fantastic way to communicate with them. We circulation clerks get to meet, greet, and serve everyone who comes into the building. What an opportunity to use our skills and personal knowledge bases! Unfortunately, we're limited by the building. We ONLY get to meet, greet, and serve the folks who come into the building. Using library 2.0 tools and philosophies, we can reach a wider range of people. We can use our skills, the same ones we use at the desk, to serve cardholders who only occasionally visit, who can't always attend programming when we can offer it (Story time video feeds! Online book discussion groups!), and to introduce non-users to our services and staff, and entice them to utilize the library. We'd be at the desk, but we'd be free from the desk as well. Out in the community. I see this as essential for a library with a small staff who might not always be able to do this in person.

I think I've wandered away from my original paragraph, but as a 2.0 user who has been frustrated by the limits of her location in relation to how she performs her job, I feel that it's important for us to realize that 2.0 is here, right now. The society we serve is in the midst of it, and if we don't learn how to use these tools, we'll fall behind. If we can't engage members of our community in this way, we'll loose them. That idea saddens me because, if we do lose them, they'll never get to experience the post-2.0 possibilites that Dr. Schultz outlined in her essay. The 3D library. Librarians as user evaluated content providers. The library as an information spa - an elegant respite for the patrons in which they can escape the daily grind and relax. These are exciting possibilities! But for us to get there, we have to take the 2.0 step. Even if we have to do it one day at a time.

Thing #14

I hadn't heard the statistic about the number of blogs doubling every 6 months! It makes me wonder how many actually endure. A lot of folks who use the service where I have my personal blog will write for a couple of months, enjoy the novelty, and then let them lapse. Some folks have more than one blog for different things like my buddy L. She has a personal blog, a writing blog, and a research blog. That would be an interesting study!


I consider myself a fairly internet savvy person. Not an expert by any means, but not a newbie either. Technorati overwhelms me. I think it's the sheer amount of stuff: search options, live updated blog feeds, user ratings, authority, tags, recommended search terms, popular blogs...and it's all right there smooshed into the main page, hitting me in the face all at once. I think I've gotten used to the simplicity of google. Logo followed by search box. Technorati is something I'm going to have to play with more, after completing this exercise, to truly feel comfortable with it.


When I did my "learning 2.0" search in posts, I got just that. Individual posts that mention learning 2.0 in the text, some of them on blogs like ours - individuals going through a learning 2.0 course (although, some only mentioned it in passing in an otherwise unrelated post). It was interesting to see how similar and different other L2.0 courses are from ours.


Searching in tags got similar results as the "posts" search, but the entries had been tagged with learning 2.0, so the results were a little bit more consistent.


Searching the directory got blogs dedicated to the subject of learning 2.0. Our lpls blog was #10 on the list!


There wasn't one blog on the "Top Favorited Blogs" list that I regularly read. Taking the list as a whole, it was easy to see the type of person who regularly uses Technorati. There was a disproportionate amount of tech, gadget, and hacker blogs. My favorite title had to be Kahlee's Blog: Never Give a Cheerleader a Keyboard. And I shouldn't have been surprised that there's a whole site dedicated to lolcat humor called icanhascheezburger.

I found it interesting that some of the most popular searches included Google, Yahoo, and Facebook, and I wonder if "searches" referred to the amount of content provided by these sites during other searches, searches for these sites (which seems kind of silly to me because one normally goes to google or yahoo to search for things), or a combination of elements.

I would consider this the least pleasurable Thing we've done so far. It seems a little too complicated for my every day needs, although it's good to know about Technorati if I need to do a more specialized search.

Thing #13

Delicious is a really interesting tool! I'd used Yahoo's bookmarking tool before, but it didn't have the tagging capability the way delicious does. Although you could separate them into categories, which was nice.


I did a little tag browsing. One of the most helpful ones to me was the imaging tag. I found all sorts of free stock photo sites. When I put up my personal web page for the contest, I threw it together with string and duct tape. Well, okay, wingdings and Paint. But still. I want to make it fancy schmancy but in a cheapo way. Some of the free photo sites are better than others, but I think I might be able to find something to play with.


I did find that a lot of the more general tags, like "books" "reading" "writing" were a little bit difficult to navigate. Books, for example, got me Amazon.com, a blog called "What Claudia Wore" and everything in between. Really, that's the main limitation I saw.


As far as on the job use, social bookmarking could be a really good way to keep all of the websites that our patrons use on a regular basis all in one place. Take the big mythology project: in Smyrna we have two different schools with lots of kids doing Greek mythology projects simultaneously. If the teachers let us know in advance we can have some reputable sites picked out and ready to go in addition to our print materials like pantheon.org.


Being the readers' advisory nut that I am, I always look for a way to incorporate the latest tools into it. We can use social bookmarking to put all of our R.A. resources in one place, systemwide, for the whole staff to use. Fantastic Fiction, AquaBrowser, Amazon, Library Thing, ETC. This way, too, if someone at a branch finds something nifty, they can bookmark it for the rest of us.


Normally I do the Discover More exercises for the 2.0 lessons. And I'll do this one eventually. But, although it is an extremely useful practice, I find tagging to be completely tedious and tend to put it off.

Thing #12

Rollyo is an interesting tool. I do a lot of research on publication markets and agents for writers' group as well as for my writing hobby. I added sites like ralan.com and Miss Snark's blog, the AAR, Predators and Editors, and Paperback Writer's blog, all who regularly post market news. I did some searching for cover letters and the majority of the results listed were from Miss Snark's "Is it Crap?" cover letter contest, but there were some really helpful ones as well. Instead of putting the search bar in this post, I stuck it on the blog as a page element so I can find it easier later.

I think Rollyo is perfect for individual use. As far as its library applications, I'll have to think about that. Our website, as it stands now, is pretty user friendly. If you're looking for computer classes, you click on "computer classes," etc. Although we could customize a search bar to include non-database websites that we know are reputable for our patrons. That way they don't have to slog through google results and they know they're getting good information.

Thing #11

I LOVE LibraryThing. Since I already have LT accounts, I figured I'd go ahead and use one of them for this post. Hope that's all right. :-)

I don't use Library Thing to catalog my home library. I'm always weeding and adding and am too lazy to keep up with it. I use LT to keep track of what I read. When I finish a book, I enter it into my LT with tags that include genre, year finished, whether it was good or not, part of a series or a single title, and sometimes some motif and theme information. I usually recommend LT to patrons who are upset or puzzled as to why we can't tell them what they checked out three years ago.

LT's book suggester is also a really good readers' advisory tool. It works similarly to What Do I Read Next's Help Me Find a Book tool, only the results come from titles that have been cataloged and tagged by LT users. It addresses WDIRN's limitations as the criteria used to tag and catalog the books include the subjective like tone and voice as well as the objective like genre and setting.

LT's strength is in its users. But that is its limitation as well. WDIRN has the power of library professionals behind it, where LT's power comes from housewives and plumbers, physicists and writers, factory workers and psychology professors. We can use the two tools in concert for the best results.

My 05/06 Library Thing has the most books and tags on it.

Thing #10

ned-flanders-simpsons_www-txt2pic-com
Originally uploaded by Melsie42

There are so many generators out there, it's overwhelming! I found myself wanting to play with things like random name generators instead of the image generators.

I attempted to Warholize the cat, but it didn't come out very well. So, for future reference, it's difficult to Warholize someone who has black and white fur.

Thing #9

I have to admit, I wasn't 100% comfortable using the non-bloglines RSS searching sites. Especially with Feedster. I did several "blogs" searches with that tool, and couldn't really tell what the results consisted of. I like to find out more information about a feed before I subscribe, but the links provided in the search were Feedster widgets and didn't actually lead anywhere when I clicked on it. Although the feeds themselves worked when I attempted to subscribe to one. I wouldn't recommend Feedster to an RSS beginner.

I liked Topix a lot, though. It weasels out information on a subject or location that you search for and sends everything it finds to the feed you subscribe to. After a few searches, I settled on a feed on my home town. Most of the articles on that subject come from local newspapers.

I found Technorati the easiest to use. You search for what you're looking for and the links go right to the text of the blog or news source so you can actually read more than a line or two before you subscribe. The advanced search link is right there on the front page so you don't have to go spelunking for it.

I found a few interesting library blogs:
Librarian in Black (I searched for this one by name as it was mentioned by Maria at the Wiki presentation)
http://www.librarybytes.com/
http://super_librarian.blogspot.com/
http://www.popgoesthelibrary.com/

The vast majority of the library blogs I found were written by professional librarians for professional librarians. I have to admit that when someone starts talking OCLC and ALA and MARC and statistics, my eyes glaze over and I lose interest. I did some searches for paraprofessionals and circulation, but most of those were interdepartmental blogs that really wouldn't mean anything to anyone but them unless one was searching for a something specific: checking to see what a particular circ staff does in response to claims returns, for example.

I was surprised at how few library blogs actually reached out to patrons. If my results are typical (And I hope they're not! Please tell me I screwed up! :-), blogging is a really underutilized outreach tool.

After searching for library tools and feeds, I did a search for book reviews and found some pretty nifty things.

Tennessee Text Wrestling
"an East Tennessee gal's thoughts on being a novelist, a reader, a cat wrangler, a biker chick, a pianist, and a nerd"

SciFiChick
News and Reviews

Geeks of Doom
(Really well designed blog on geekery!)

Reading Dirt
"Reading our way down the garden path: a site for the literary gardener."
(I thought this one was very unique! A review site dedicated to gardening books.)

Bookninja