Book Banding Update

I have a message from Phillip Pullman of NoToAgeBanding.org:

A meeting has been arranged with representatives of the publishers, including Simon Juden, Chief Executive of the Publishers Association, Kate Bostock of the PA, and Elaine McQuade of Scholastic. I will putting our case, and I will be joined by Mark Le Fanu and Celia Rees of the Society of Authors. The meeting will take place on Thursday 3 July at Scholastic Children's books.

There isn't an agenda yet, but the purpose of the meeting is to clarify and reiterate our objections to the age-ranging proposal and see if we can help the PA see what a blunder they've made. I would also like to discover several things about the 'research' which so far remain opaque.

All your comments and experiences have been very helpful. If there is anything in particular you would like me to raise on your behalf, do please contact me at feedback@notoagebanding.org I can't guarantee to do so, of course, because I don't know how many people will respond, but anything you can let me know in addition to what you've already communicated to us would be extremely helpful. It would be especially helpful to hear from teachers and experts in reading development, since the PA's research obviously took no account of the problems their proposal might cause in this field.

I shall report on the outcome of the meeting very soon after it's happened.
Philip Pullman

Library Thing

I just discovered my new favorite website. Its called Library Thing, and it is a virtual catalog of your own library that is shared with the other members of the site and it is used for networking purposes as well as logging all of your books. This is exactly what I have been looking for but never knew existed until now. I got the tip from Neil Gaiman's blog. I was so immediately taken with it that I actually purchased a lifetime membership so that I could log my hundreds of books. Memberships are free for the first two hundred books you log into your library, and if you want to log more than that you can purchase a yearly membership for $10 or a lifetime membership for $25.

To log your books you just type in the title, author, or ISBN number into their search box. But if you are like me and have literally hundreds of books to log, you can purchase a cue cat from them for $15 which will scan the bar-codes and load the info into your library.
One of my favorite aspects of this website is the community it brings to you. You can immediately see other people who have the same taste in books as you! You can join online book and discussion groups, and you can get personalized recommendations based on the content of your virtual library. They even have an "advanced reader program" where you can sign up to receive advanced reader copies of the latest books for free as long as you provide a review of the book in a timely fashion.

If you are a bibliophile like me, then you have got to check it out. Go to: http://www.librarything.com/. You'll feel like you have finally found your community of book lovers.