The folks at Type books up in Ontario produced this stop motion video, called The Joy of Books almost three years ago and it’s still a good one.
What is it about sitting back and watching all the books go ’round? I also have to say that the whole “shelve your books by color” contingent is bolstered – it really works when the rainbow of book spines are moving along to the beat.
Creative people are cool. Creative book people are +1 beyond that though.
One of the largest indoor photos ever posted online comes in at over 40 gigapixels and is a fly-around-the-room tour of a library! How awesome is this place?
This single image is made up of more than 3,000 images stitched together. If they were printed out the site claims the photo would be 78 feet long!
This gargantuan gigapixel image has been online since 2011, showing the world the largest and smallest details of the Strahov Library. The Strahov Llibrary is in Prague inside the Strahov Monastery.
I could just watch this image all day checking out all of the spines in such detail. What an amazing library. This 40 gigapixel image is very cool, but I bet this place is something else when seen in person.
Last week Google launched a new search feature for their Google+ social network. Basically, it adds groupings, tags, etc. and makes the network all searchable so that you can skim through all of the content generated on Google+.
So what’s the first thing I did? I did a few simple searches through Google Explore to see if I could find any books and book-related content that was of interest. I really wasn’t looking for people “curating” (like pinterest or tumblr), but for real content that harkened back to the days of book blog rings and such.
So I clicked on the “Explore” button up top…
and searched for “Books”. I was thankful for the Google Explore displayed all of the books-related tags that I could follow and check out.
Early on I found these not worth following because of all the ads, spam and sales pitches:
The rabbit holes I really enjoyed falling down through Google Explore were:
As you can see, once you click on #BookLovers you’re presented with a whole new slate of sub-categories and tags to click through. As new as the feature is (and as under-used as Google+ is) it’s not hard to quickly separate the signal from the noise and find folks worth following. From there it’s a single-click to add them to a new (or old) circle to keep up with them.
When I next have a few free moments I’m going to click around with category, subject and book genre searches. Hopefully those will yield more leads to books worth reading. So check it out and let me know if you find any bookish folks worth following.
If you like book trivia, here is a quick classic novel quiz with just 17 questions (and it’s multiple choice!). All you have to do is read the opening line from a classic novel and then check the box of the book you think it came from.
Your score is tallied at the end with all of the wrong answers in red and the correct answers showing up with green boxes.
I missed 7 of them. I’ve never been very good at “opening lines” quizzes, but I do enjoy taking them. I just never really pay attention to opening lines, though I know there are some great ones. It’s definitely something I want to pay closer attention to. Trivia is always fun, but it’s even better when all the questions are book-related.
Also, if you haven’t played it yet, there is a new app out called QuizUp (it’s only on iOS right now, but an Android app is coming). It has a Literature category with 27 sub-categories and more being added weekly. This is waaaaay too much fun and I’ve lost waaaaaay too much of my life to this game. Some of the book trivia subcategories are General Lit, Classical Lit, Batman comics, Twilight, Science Fiction, Harry Potter, and the Hunger Games.
Anyway, chime in with how you did on the 17 question book trivia Classic Novel Quiz game.
