According to Goodreads, I read 41 books in 2011. I know that's not a lot by many librarians' standards, but it's pretty good for me!
Only four books got five stars:
Left Neglected by Lisa Genova
Girl in Translation by Jean Kwok
Fallen Grace by Mary Hooper
The Complete Homebrew Beer Book by George Hummel (ha!)
I gave twenty-one books three stars. That's the rating I gave the most books.
There were three books that I only gave two stars:
Pretties by Scott Westerfeld
Legacy by Danielle Steel
Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
No books got one star.
Nine books were by male authors, 31 by female, and one by a company (Real Simple).
The most books were read in April: Seven. Most months were around four or five.
I seem to like books with cover art of the back of a woman's head. That's weird, but five books have variations on this cover:
Girl in Translation by Jean Kwok
Grace Fallen by Mary Hooper
Change of Heart by Jodi Picoult
A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray
Not My Daughter by Barbara Delinsky
It's been an interesting year! Goal for 2012: 50 books. Can I do it?
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Friday, January 20, 2012
I like Google. I use a variety of their services, and I find most of their products and apps very useful. Here are some of my favorite Google Tools:
Google Hotel Finder
Find hotels by various criteria, such as location and price.
Google Flights
Search and compare prices of flights.
Google Lit Trips
Create geographic presentations of literature. Very cool for book clubs and class discussions.
Google Product Search
Find the best product for your needs. For example, if you type "ebook reader" you get a list of devices, who is selling them, and at what price. You can limit results to a price range, to only products that are currently in stock, only those with free shipping, with or without wifi capability, by brand, and by several other specifications (screen size, multimedia capability, etc.)
Google Images
Find a picture of just about anything! You can also limit results to creative commons images if you plan to re-use them on your own creation.
Google Video
Find videos in various sources. YouTube is great, but you only get YouTube videos when you go straight to that source. In Google videos, you get results for sites like eHow.com, cnet.com, discovery.com, and YouTube (and about a million more!)
Google Maps and Google Earth - I like the ability to "search nearby." If you find a hotel, you can "search nearby" for restaurants, malls, or whatever.
Google News - up to the minute...literally
Gmail - I'm a huge fan of the labels vs. folders organization and the ability to see an entire conversation in one file.
Gchat - You can choose to have chat transcripts saved in your Gmail account.
Google Documents - Ability to share documents with a web link and collaborate on them with others.
Google Calendar - You can share these with other Google calendar users, too. You can also color code your life, which is fantastic!
Google Reader - I'll admit, this one is falling a bit farther down my list of Google loves. The last "upgrade" was a downgrade. One of the things I loved best was the ability to click the "share" link at the bottom of a blog post and have it list automatically in the "Shared Items" box on my own blog.
Related tools that are owned/hosted/whatever by Google:
Picasa - online photo storage and sharing
Blogger - HollyHibner.com is a Blogger site.
Android - operating system for my phone, which I love
YouTube
Picnik - online photo editing
Google Hotel Finder
Find hotels by various criteria, such as location and price.
Google Flights
Search and compare prices of flights.
Google Lit Trips
Create geographic presentations of literature. Very cool for book clubs and class discussions.
Google Product Search
Find the best product for your needs. For example, if you type "ebook reader" you get a list of devices, who is selling them, and at what price. You can limit results to a price range, to only products that are currently in stock, only those with free shipping, with or without wifi capability, by brand, and by several other specifications (screen size, multimedia capability, etc.)
Google Images
Find a picture of just about anything! You can also limit results to creative commons images if you plan to re-use them on your own creation.
Google Video
Find videos in various sources. YouTube is great, but you only get YouTube videos when you go straight to that source. In Google videos, you get results for sites like eHow.com, cnet.com, discovery.com, and YouTube (and about a million more!)
Google Maps and Google Earth - I like the ability to "search nearby." If you find a hotel, you can "search nearby" for restaurants, malls, or whatever.
Google News - up to the minute...literally
Gmail - I'm a huge fan of the labels vs. folders organization and the ability to see an entire conversation in one file.
Gchat - You can choose to have chat transcripts saved in your Gmail account.
Google Documents - Ability to share documents with a web link and collaborate on them with others.
Google Calendar - You can share these with other Google calendar users, too. You can also color code your life, which is fantastic!
Google Reader - I'll admit, this one is falling a bit farther down my list of Google loves. The last "upgrade" was a downgrade. One of the things I loved best was the ability to click the "share" link at the bottom of a blog post and have it list automatically in the "Shared Items" box on my own blog.
Related tools that are owned/hosted/whatever by Google:
Picasa - online photo storage and sharing
Blogger - HollyHibner.com is a Blogger site.
Android - operating system for my phone, which I love
YouTube
Picnik - online photo editing
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
National Geographic Index
Just a quick note: National Geographic is no longer publishing the annual index. Instead, they have an index freely available at http://publicationsindex.nationalgeographic.com. It is keyword searchable, and very easy to use.
I'm not a huge fan of dusty old reference tomes that are hidden away in a separate reference collection, little used, largely overlooked, and forgotten. I did, however, like THIS particular reference book! I have found it very useful in helping patrons use our National Geographic back issues...and we have a LOT of them (back to the early 1980s, I think).
I'm happy to see the new FREE online index, though, and accept it wholeheartedly as a replacement for the print volume.
I'm not a huge fan of dusty old reference tomes that are hidden away in a separate reference collection, little used, largely overlooked, and forgotten. I did, however, like THIS particular reference book! I have found it very useful in helping patrons use our National Geographic back issues...and we have a LOT of them (back to the early 1980s, I think).
I'm happy to see the new FREE online index, though, and accept it wholeheartedly as a replacement for the print volume.
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