Mastics-Moriches-Shirley Community Library Reader Advisory Blog: Apps for Bookworms

Let's face it. Printing books takes a lot of resources. With these green friendly apps, you don't have to be concerned about environmental resources while you enjoy your favorite pastime.

For cataloging your book collection:
The Book Catalogue

Anyone who loves to read knows the difficulty of keeping a collection in order. The Book Catalogue app makes it easy to organize and locate your eBooks. The app shows you the authors, titles, and covers of your books. You can organize them by title, author, or genre. Perhaps even cooler, though, is that the app lets you:

Read book reviews
Keep track of books you lend to your friends
Find libraries that have the books you want to borrow

Sharing your favorite books:
GoodReads

Goodreads originally became popular as a Facebook app. Now you can load it on your Android device. The Goodreads app has several features that book lovers will enjoy. Use it to:

Read reviews of over 12 million books written by more than 8.5 million members
Keep track of your reading list
Tell your friends what books you’re reading
Comment on reviews written by your friends
Scan your books so you can catalog your collection of printed books as well as eBooks

For listening to books:
Librivox

Busy bookworms have to get their lit fix however they can. That often means listening to audiobooks in the car, during workouts, or while cleaning the house. The LibriVox app lets you listen to over 6,000 books for free.

LibriVox relies on volunteers who record and edit its audiobooks. It adds to its collection every day. Currently, the app gives you access to several genres, including:

history
fiction
classics
poetry
biography
short stories

Being Mortal by Atul Gawande

Genre: Adult Non-Fiction
Rating: 5 out of 5

"Being Mortal is about the limitations of what modern medicine can provide for people as their lives draw to a close. Gawande argues that the objective of medicine should not merely be treatment and survival; medical care should also ensure dignity in death and having control over one's final moments. He argues that instead of aggressively fighting the inescapable realities of aging, we should ask the hard questions of ourselves and our loved ones -- What makes life worth living? When should we try to extend our lives, and when should we choose a better quality of our remaining days over extending their quantity?

This book is difficult to read. Not because of the way Gawande writes -- his style is highly engaging, and he never lapses into excessively scientific jargon or overly simplistic explanations -- but because of the tough subject matter. Gawande draws on his own experiences as a doctor and peppers his book with honest and humane stories of his patients, friends, and family; the stories he tells make the book more accessible, and also more heartbreaking. (And that's not a bad thing.)

No one likes to think about their loved ones', or their own, impending mortality. But it's important to have these hard conversations, because as Gawande says, "endings matter." - Amanda

Apps for Bookworms

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