Interesting/Cool sites?

[Lu]

Any Interesting/Cool sites out there you want to share?

[Lauren]

These are some of my favourites:

www.authoralerts.com - get notifications of new publications from your favourite authors.

www.academicearth.org - Academic Earth offers video and audio recordings of open lectures from universities like Harvard and Yale. Some of them are downloadable. Class notes and reading lists are also available. It's mostly science, but there are also humanities and arts courses like The American novel, Dante's Inferno, Ancient Greece.

www.whatshouldireadnext.com - Enter the books you like and the site will analyse your list and suggest something for you to read next. Also list what you like and dislike, to help build the database and improve suggestions.

www.librarything.com - a book cataloguing site similar to Goodreads, but with larger and better organised discussion groups.

www.bookmooch.com - international bookswapping site. A great way to share books and get loads of new ones.

www.imdb.com - The Internet Movie Database. Discussion boards, trivia, FAQ, news.

[Lu]

Lauren wrote: "These are some of my favourites:

www.whatshouldireadnext.com: Enter the books you like and the site will analyse your list and suggest something for you to read next. Also list what you like and dislike, to help build the database and improve suggestions."

That is awesome!

[Lauren]

I forgot to mention fora.tv

It always bugs me that we don't have many interesting (ok interesting to me) book launches or public lectures in SA. Fora TV sort of makes up for that - you can download audio and visual files of authors talking at book launches, conferences about interesting topics, public lectures, etc. Some of my favourites are:
Salman Rushdie reading from The Enchantress of Florence, and discussing his work in general
Mary Roach chatting about her book Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex (very funny)
AJ Jacbos talking about his book The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible As Literally As Possible (also very funny)
Leslie Bennetts on her book The Feminine Mistake: Are We Giving Up Too Much? (very interesting, especially for any woman thinking of becoming a stay-at-home mom).

[Lu]

Thanks for letting us know about that site Lauren!

[Sarah]

Shelfari is a good one.