Book-Related Sites

This collection of links is by no means complete and almost certainly has circularities. I have tried to organize them under some loose categories, but some sites fall under many categories and I have had to chose where to list them using my best judgement. Hopefully my summaries of what each site includes will be of help.

At the bottom of this page I have a list of unsorted, undescribed sites that I haven't had a chance to look at yet. These will eventually be processed, but I wanted to make them available.

If you have a site that you would like to see listed here, e-mail me at hollandm@cs.cornell.edu and let me know. Though I reserve the right to omit any site from this list, I will most probably include any sites that are suggested.

Authors

Authors' Web Pages: There are so many authors with web pages about them that I won't list them all here. Yahoo has a fairly comprehesive listing of them under Art and Humanities:Humanities:Literature:Authors. However, I have set up a page with a list of links to the pages associated with some of my favorite authors.

Bibliographies

Bibliography on Women in Byzantium: This bibliography covers both primary and secondary sources, both in translation, concerning women in Byzantium. This site is maintained by the Ebert Art Center at the College of Wooster.
Resources for Remembrance Day: A bibliography of books, plays, poetry and other educational material concerning Remembrance Day. The works sited are divided into material suitable for children versus young adults and is all educational in nature, suitable for teaching. This site is maintained by Queen's Education Library at Queen's University.
The Untimely Past: A bibliography of English language texts relating to "the intersection of historiographic practice with poststructuralism, postmodernism, and allied areas of theory/practice".The bilibliography can be viewed as a whole, with comments given for many of the books, or there are a small number of sub-bibliographies relating to selected topics.

Book Publishers

Cambridge University Press: The Cambridge University Press web site has a searchable catalog of their titles, on-line ordering facilities, news about recently released books and review quotes for some of their books. Listings for and ordering of journals published by the Cambridge University Press is also available.
Oxford University Press, USA: Oxford University Press provides on-line searchable information on all of the titles that they print. In addition, you can order any of their books from them through their web site. There are reviews/synopses available for some of their books, most noteably of their featured titles which change seasonally. Another feature is their American National Biography biography of the day - a short essay on a figure in American history which changes daily.
SimonSays.COM: This is the web page for Simon & Schuster Consumer Group, a subgroup of the publisher Simon & Schuster. They have descriptions of featured titles as well as a searchable index of all of their titles. They also have a searchable collection of reader reviews, on-line reading groups and reading group guides to use in off-line reading groups. They also support bulletin boards, chat rooms, and mailing lists for discussing books and have an event calendar listing book-related events around the country.

Book Retailers

Amazon.com Books: Amazon.com is an on-line only bookstore which lists 2.5 million titles. They have search facilities by author, title and subject as well as browsable listings of their books by type or subject. They have descriptions of most of their books and reviews of many of them. Customized recommendation services are available (and fun to try out). They will also do special orders and try to locate out-of-print books. This is one of my personal favorite sites.
Computer Literacy: computerliteracy.com is an on-line bookstore specializing in computer and technical books. The on-line store is associated with three partner retail stores. With an amazon.com look and almost identical features, this site lists new titles, best sellers, has subject cateogires, and will give personalized recommendations on top of the standard search capabilities. In summary, an amazon.com for the hard core geek.
WordsWorth Books: WordsWorth Books is a bookstore located in Cambridge MA which has expanded onto the internet. They have on-line copies of their book catalogs which includes descriptions of their books as well as a search feature over their entire listing of books. They feature author interviews, kids sections, a "book of the day" and weekly contests.

Book Reviews

Airpower Journal Book Reviews: Many book reviews from "Air Chronicles", a DOD professional on-line journal are stored here. They are sorted by subect, with the broad categories covered being airpower, current events, history and research & technology.
The Book Group: The Book Group self describes as a "carefully selected group of elite literary critics, authors, poets, librarians, scientists, lawyers, historians, linguists, and mathematicians from around the world" who monthy read and discuss a new book, after which a ranking is given one of the members posts a review (not every ranked book has a review). Additional comments can be left by other members of the group or visitors to the site. The books are all selected from the category of literature but cover a variety of genres.
BookPage Online: The online companion to the national review publication "BookPage", this site is a monthly-updated collection of book reviews and interviews with authors, sorted by type of book. They also have an archive of back issues of BookPage Online with basic search abilities.
The Book Review Corner: The Book Review Corner has reviews covering a range of about 100 fiction and non-fiction works and are listed by category but with no discernable order within each category. The reviews are written by many people and vary in length and quality.
Boston Phoenix Book Reviews: A weekly updated collection of reviews (which are archived by date) and a literary calendar listing literary events around Boston for the week.
Doug's Library -- Welcome Page: A collection of book reviews of speculative fiction and some non-fiction by an individual who likes to read. The reviews are indexed by author and most reviews are just a paragraph or two long.
Educate Online Book Reviews: A collection of reviews by the Educate Online group and other independent reviewers. The reviewed books are fiction and non-fiction books including HTML and internet related books and books published by Dorling Kindersley. The reviews are lengthy and include extensive price and publisher contact information. The page also has reviews of software, CD-ROMs, games, hardware and shareware.
Hungry Mind Review Homepage: This site is the on-line companion to 'Hungry Mind Review: The National Book Magazine". It has reviews of many different types of books as well as a few feature articles. Old reviews are archived and sorted by category and title. They also maintain a discussion area.
The Independent Reader: The Independent Reader is an index of book recommendations for a variety of topics. Recommendations can be searched by subject, author, title or publisher. Each listed book has been recommended by a participating independent bookstore which provides a paragraph summary of the book. A featured "monthly picks" section is included, with past months' picks archived. Reader's comments are also available for some books. Information is given about each of the participating independed bookstores as well.
Loci: The Books: The book review section of the Loci webzine run by and created for college students. Their reviews are about a page each and they add a new review each month; old reviews are listed alphabetically by title.They also give a list of Barnes and Nobles Top Ten Sellers, though this list is not kept up to date reliably.
Nerd World : BOOKS BY SUBJECT: A listing of descriptions and/or reviews of books both in alphabetical order and listed by subject. The descriptions of the books range from a setence or two to a full length review depending on the book. This appears to be a collection of web pages about particular books collected from all over the web. There are also some web sites which contain information on a number of books listed.
Plant's Review of Books: An online archive of the paper and web magazine Plant's Review of Books out of Portland. Each issue contains a large number of thorough reviews of a range of books. This is a very nicely presented site.
Tea Room Book Reviews: This privately maintained page of book reviews is small but covers books in categories ranging from children's literature to classics to philosophy to science and science fiction. The reviews tend to be short, but often suggestions of other books to try if you like the one reviewed are included. There is also a list of other sites with on-line reviews and on-line booksellers.
Wolftracks - Book Reviews: This page has a small collection of reviews of books of interest to members of the SCA community.
The Women's Review of Books: A web site associated with the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women's monthy publication of the same name, each month's Table of Contents and featured highlights are available on the web. Information on ordering the print version is available.

On-Line Books

Alex: A Catalog of Electronic Texts on the Internet: This project attempts to catelog on-line books. Search facilities allow the user to enter a query and be returned a list of matches with links to the books at the various sites where they are stored. As of 1998, the project is suspended and the catelog has not been updated beyond approximately 2000 entries.
The English Server: Based in the English Department at Carnegie Mellon University, this site lists over 20,000 on-line works over a broad range of categories including not just fiction but scholarly and critical works, music and multimedia, and essays as well. The collection is searchable as well as having the texts organized by category. Within categories, links are also given to other outside resources.
Internet Wiretap book collection: An ftp/gopher collection of about 200 books in ascii format, listed by author and title.
Online Book Initiative: An ftp/gopher site with a collection of ascii versions of freely redistributable texts, organized in a set of folders with somewhat descriptive names. This site is not as easy to find things in as most others.
On-line Books Page: This site has over 6000 books available on-line and is searchable by author, title and subject. It also has special feature sections on women writers and banned books. They list other book archives to check if they don't have the book you want, as well as foreign language collections.

Reading Groups and Reading Group Information

Ballantine Reader's Circle: The Ballantine Readers Circle is a series of books published by the Ballantine Publishing Company which they consider ideal for reading groups. These editions include reading group guides at the ends of the books. These guides, as well as a sample chapter from each of their selected books, are also available here on the web. The guides include interview excerpts with the author, questions to discuss, excerpts from reviews and a biography of the author.
BDD Book Group Corner Forum: Part of the Bantam, Doubleday Dell website, this subsite has reader's companions and book group guides for a number of books that they publish. Margaret Atwood's books are heavily featured. They guides include things such as excerpts from interviews or reviews, questions to discuss, biographical information of the author and suggested supplemental reading. They also have bulletin boards for discussing books and book groups.
Book Lovers Club: This club for book lovers features a bulletin board for the discussion of books. Membership is open so anyone can participate. An archive is kept of old postings. The Book Lovers Ring is also maintained at this site; this ring is made up of the web sites of established members of the Book Lovers Club.
Bookworms Anonymous: The web page for a Metro Detriot area women's reading group; this site gives a brief history of their reading group, their reading lists going back to 1994, top ten book lists for members of their reading group and brief member reviews of some books.
Chatelaine Book Club: This is the book club section of the Chatelaine Connects web site, associated with the Canadian women's magazine Chatelaine.The site has a bulletin board for book discussion and hosts guest authors in the forum.They also have a special "book of the month" forum where a selected set of books are discussed each month. A few author profiles and articles about books are also available, as well as links to other book sites..
Gerber/Hart Library Programs: This site includes the reading lists for the lesbian fiction, gay men's fiction and nonfiction book discussion groups sponsored by the Gerber/Hart Library. The reading lists go back through 1995 and the gay men's fiction list includes a 31 work chronologically ordered plan for reading.
Mostly, We Eat: The web site for a private reading group where book discussion goes on over yummy meals. They list the books they have read, along with any theme that went with the food they ate at that meeting, going back to 1993. The list is annotated to indicate if the book has a reading guide available and if they highly recommend the book for other reading groups. There is also a list of their favorite on-line resources for reading groups.
Vintage Books Reading Group Center: Maintained as part of the Vintage Books web site, the reading group center has reading group guides and teacher's guides available for a large number of books in fiction, nonfiction and memoirs. Each book that comes with a guide also has a short summary given of it. The guides include discussion questions and suggestions for further reading. The reading center also has a featured book of the month which includes an excerpt from the book and about which they host a bulletin board discussion. They also list recommended books for discussion and tips for starting and participating in a reading group. They have a listing of reading group resources which include on-line book excerpts, author Q&As and discussion groups, organizations which assist reading groups, online book reviews and a bibliography of books and other publications about reading groups.

Miscellaneous Book-Related Sites

Bookstores: A Rhodes College library page indexing online bookstores and CD-ROM vendors, book reviews, publishers and electronic texts. Some of the sites have brief descriptions to go with them.This is a fairly comprehensive set of links.
BookWire Homepage: BookWire contains information on the book industry in general, including book industry news, reviews, original fiction, author interviews, and a calendar of literary events. They have a discussion area and search facilities for their site as well.
Jam! Books home page: A Canadian site mostly containing news stories about books and authors but with some book reviews, on-line discussion of favorite books. Archives of past news articles and reviews are maintained and are searchable.

This is my list of to-be-sorted web sites. Feel free to peruse them.