Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, featuring a different top 10 theme each week.
This week’s theme is Top Ten Things That Make Your Life as a Reader/Book Blogger Easier. This is a toughie. Can I get to ten?
1) Goodreads: What is there to say? I love being able to keep track of my reading, love seeing what my friends are reading, love the great resources. One nifty aspect (yes, I used the word “nifty”) is being able to access so many cool stats about my reading. Author I’ve read the most? Check. All books I’ve rated 5-stars in 2013? Check. No end to the awesomeness of Goodreads.
2) The public library. I love my neighborhood branch. It’s clean, it’s bright, it has views of the ocean, and it has everything I could possibly want! I especially love being able to put in requests and have books transferred to my branch.
My library. I love it so.
3) Good book sections in the newspaper: My local newspaper has an excellent Sunday book section. In addition, a couple of years ago I treated myself to a mail subscription to the Book Review section of the Sunday New York Times. Both are wonderful resources for me to use to stay current on new releases, see what’s being promoted and what’s coming up, and keep up with all the various bestseller charts. Maybe (okay, more than likely) I’m a dinosaur for continuing to rely on paper resources, but I do find these invaluable.
4) NetGalley: A huge and heart-felt THANK YOU to NetGalley for providing access to all those wonderful pre-release review copies. Even though I don’t always get approved for the books I want, I get approved for a lot — and have read and reviewed some wonderful books thanks to this terrific resource. Plus, their Wellness Challenge earlier this year was so helpful!
5) Other bloggers: Oh, you guys! You rock! It’s such a thrill to interact on a regular basis with so many smart, funny, insightful people. I’ve found the book blogging community to be so warm and supportive in the 1+ year I’ve been blogging. Couldn’t do it without y’all!
6) Free tools: How I love the free stuff! My superstar go-to resources right now are Pixabay for free public domain images and Picmonkey for awesome photo editing tools. Of course, every once in a while, I’ve wanted a special something that I couldn’t find via a public domain image library — and I’ve found some great items via IStockPhoto. The prices are reasonable, and the selection is terrific!
7) Social media: For keeping up to date, as well as heaping doses of pop culture wackiness and nerdgirl fun, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest are endlessly helpful — and totally diverting, especially when a little procrastination is called for.
8) Post-It flags: Silly, right? But since I prefer to do my reading with physical books, and since I refuse to highlight or underline, these little flags are my go-to item for marking pages or passages that I want to find again. Especially for books I know I’ll be reviewing, they’re essential. (You should see my current book — it’s like a little rainbow flag all along the edge!)
I get a bit carried away sometimes.
9) Kindle/E-reader: I really do prefer physical books, but most of my review copies are e-books. On the down side, the review copy formatting is often problematic. On the plus side, I do love Kindle’s highlighting feature, which makes it so easy to mark and return to passages of interest.
10) My family: Much as they may mock me at times (“Reading? Again???”), my loved ones are pretty good about giving me quiet time when I need it to read, to write, to edit… so long as I come back and play board games or otherwise make myself useful when I’m done.
Oh, and I guess I’ll add in a #11! This one occurred to me on the late side, and I don’t want to delete any of my first ten…
11) Authors who rock! I really, really appreciate the authors who take the time to answer questions, interact with readers on a regular basis, and respond with warmth and friendliness when contacted. And the authors who’ve appeared in my local bookstores, signing books, and even taking pictures with fan after fan? Priceless!
I guess getting to ten wasn’t that hard after all! What’s on your list this week?
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Bookshelf Fantasies 
YAY for the post-its. When I read a paper book I do that too. It is great to see other people doing it 😀
It’s so handy! The sad thing is when I add a zillion post-its to a library book — and then have to remove them all before I return it.
I should use post its rather than just scribble on a bit of paper! I wouldn’t write on the actual book though *shudders* Great list!
“Shudder” – LOL. The horror! I bought a book at a used book sale last year, and found page after page of handwritten notes (in PEN) inside it once I got it home. Awful…
Great list, we share a few. I’m just sad we don’t have cool libraries like USA does. We barely get any new YA books, mostly just bestsellers and even those are rare. Not even translations… It sucks being a teeny tiny country, books-wise.
Happy reading!
My TTT
That’s too bad that you can’t get the books you want through your library. 😦 I really rely on mine, but I know even here in the US I’m lucky to live in a city with such a great system of library branches.
I think I’ve only used the post-it flags with my non-fiction books during uni, they’re very handy 🙂 Oh, and one of my Lorca poetry books (was too lazy to re-find the page of some of my favourite poems, lol)
I don’t read the physical newspaper as often anymore (because I’m following them on Twitter, I just check out articles of headlines that catch my attention) but I am following a number of book sections from newspapers over at Twitter. Definitely added a title or two through them.
Great list, as always! 🙂 My TTT
Thanks, Lianne! I really just started with the post-its since I started blogging, but boy are they great! In college, I relied on highlighters, which left my books messy and not very helpful. See, I’ve gotten wiser since then!
Oh, your library sounds just lovely. 🙂
It is! It was completely rebuilt about two years ago, with lots of windows, comfy seats, technology — plus, it’s walking distance from my house! I really love it and feel so lucky to have it!
My neighborhood library isn’t the best in town, but our city’s library website is just so good that I reserve books all the time and just pick them up from my branch. Interlibrary loans, ftw!
Absolutely, interlibrary loans are the best! I love that I can get pretty much anything I want, usually without too long a wait. 🙂
Everybody keeps talking about picmonkey! I think I better check them out because uploaded pictures through Blogger drives me absolutely crazy sometimes.
It’s a great tool for editing pictures, adding effects, text, cropping, etc. There are premium upgrades, but I just use the basics and find it so easy (and it’s free!).
We have some of the same! I still cannot get my head around twitter-don’t know how to do it and I am not too sure I want to!
I know what you mean! I was a reluctant Twitter adapter — but now I do find it useful for keeping up with authors, book news, other bloggers, plus it’s another good way to promote the blog and hopefully get a few more eyes on my postings! I’m not very diligent, but I can see how it would be effective to really get into it. Thanks for stopping by!
I like your library too! 🙂
I love your #1 and #2, they would probably be my top two as well. (My library doesn’t have a view of the ocean but I love it anyway.) And yes, all the different stats you can check with Goodreads makes it SO helpful!
A library with a view of the ocean??? That sounds like heaven.
I love those little flags. I don’t actually use them in my books (although now I’m thinking I should!), but I use them frequently at work.
Thanks for visiting!
Stephanie @ Inspiring Insomnia
I totally forgot to add my friends, I am always hitting them up for their opinions. I should do that tonight. And I just joined Natgalley, way cool site.
Great! Of course, I end up going overboard with NetGalley from time to time and request soooo many books — and then get panicky over how I’m ever going to find time for them all! I suppose that’s a good problem to have, though, and really, it’s a terrific resource. Let me know how you like it!
I got my first book from there, 1970 about all the great food minds coming together to shape how America eats. I really can’t wait to read it and hopefully can suggest it to the Slow Food book club that I lead.
I also put tons of post-its into my books! And I love the kindle highlighting option – helps me to keep track of the plot as well as mark my favorite parts 🙂
And damn do I envy you that library! Also, thanks for 6) – never heard of Pixabay before!
Thanks for stopping by 🙂
All important resources. I love all of the information that can be found on Goodreads. Beyond that, I am addicted to the ease of eBooks, after resisting them for awhile. Now that my library offers them, it has been really convenient.