So I've been trying to move away from amazon stuff for my book shopping and organizing. It's not complete, but here are some things that are working for me:
* ebooks and real books from the library. VPL has an A+ online catalog and lets me put books on hold from online!
* My local bookshop, Pulpfiction
* ebooks via Weightless and Kobo
* keeping track of series with fictfact
* chatting in #books and #AmReading
I haven't really looked for a goodreads replacement yet and am open to recs.
Benefits of the library
1) free
2) lots of ebooks and audiobooks of higher quality than I might choose myself if exposed to the entire amazon/kobo catalog
3) getting actual books involves walking to the library, a very pleasant half hour round trip
4) I like seeing all the people at the library reading newspapers and learning how to use computers and wasting time and figuring out immigration and jobs and stuff
5) the library is near the corner produce stand that always has the best fruit
@susannah LIBRARIES!
here is a recent story about how Canada's great libraries https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/jun/15/risotto-robotics-and-virtual-reality-how-canada-created-the-worlds-best-libraries
my library has
- lego club (only for kids sadly)
- an info centre on local jobs, services for immigrants & low income people
- musical instruments to borrow
- a great Black & Caribbean collection, including fiction & nonfiction
- movie nights
- printers and scanners
- rooms for community groups to rent
and it's not even a particularly big or well-appointed library
@nev ok, so Toronto libraries look amazing, but I <3 Vancouver libraries so much! They have a lot of similar features. I really love the density of small community branches and their responsiveness to what their specific neighborhoods need. Thanks for sending long that guardian article - Canadian libraries (at least in the cities) are such incredible parts of our community.
@susannah I would love to hear about Vancouver libraries
@susannah a relatively new library 20 minutes away has a recording studio, workstations with video/audio software, MacBooks you can work on, Arduino kits (and also classes), a 3D printer, and more