Readings, Rated
Wowbrary
I’ve been remiss in not posting about this handy little service sooner. Wowbrary allows you to sign up for free weekly email alerts about your library’s newest arrivals. Maybe you think that the library only has musty old boring books, but it isn’t so. Libraries are constantly adding new books, movies, and music to their collections to give the public what they want. This is far from a perfect site, pulling together a fairly random smattering of titles for their top choices, but still, it’s interesting to see what’s new at the library, if you’re into that sort of thing, which I am. Just this week I found out that the Chicago Public Library added World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, Apollo’s Song, and 3:10 to Yuma. Hmm, maybe I can take that off my Netflix queue now.
What an awesome resource!
Thank you for maintaining such a wonderful site!
I agree with you, Maria, public libraries are much more than musty old books. Every week the Chicago Public Library adds many hundred wonderful new titles to its collection. You wouldn’t know that by just walking into the Harold Washington Library Center or one of the branch libraries: Most of the new stuff instantly finds its way to borrowers or may be at other branches. At nonprofit Wowbrary promoting reading and libraries, we are passionate about giving everyone a chance to learn about and select from all these treasures, spending only a few minutes doing so.
Wowbrary’s Top Choices are not a single person’s favorites, but a broad consensus. From all the titles added by the library during the week we select the 20 most popular (by Amazon sales), and no category is represented by more than two titles. However, we do encourage everyone to browse all the titles in their area of interest, whether it be literature, arts, science, history, biographies, DVDs, health, food & wine, etc.
We thank you very much for telling Chicago literati about Wowbrary and hope to help lots of people in your city find great books to enjoy at the Chicago Public Library!
Torben Gronning
Wowbrary