Book reading resources

When I read books, I’d like to support local businesses and the open web. These are some of the resources I’ve found that make it easier to find and read books.

• Libby makes it easy to borrow and read library books, but the download to Kindle option gives Amazon valuable data. There’s no way to read books on other e-reader devices.

• Standard Ebooks and Global Grey provide open access to public domain books.

• Bookshop is an online marketplace for books that donates profits to local bookstores as a benefit corporation. In early 2022, it started using an email subscription nag panel and had broken some of its links.

• Open Library is meant to be used to reference books online, but in practice doesn’t have a large enough database yet.

• Literal is a social network for reading lists.

• readng helps maintain a reading list.

• Italic Type is a place to take notes on books.

• Indie Bound helps buy books from local booksellers.

• Book Marks collects book reviews.

• BookWyrm is a decentralized social network for reading books.

• Bookfeed.io creates an RSS feed for authors

• Jack Baty practices Book logging in plain text.

• Simon Hørup Eskildsen has a lot of practical tips about choosing books on How I Read.