Books & Reading

Books! Reading! A Curated List to Inform and Entertain Readers

Brainerd Library’s “Nature’s Inspiration” Book List

“The Natural World” theme includes: backyard habitats & gardening, climate change, outdoor adventures, rainforests, coral reefs, trees, survival, sustainability and wildlife.  Represented are: novels, poetry, children’s, teen’s, illustrated, scientific, and graphic novels. They provide entertainment, insight, information & education.  We hope you’ll enjoy the beautiful illustrations, the lyrical prose, and exciting plots –  And be inspired by them!   Short list of resources included.

Book Lists links below & some copies available at the library or can be requested from another library. Extended list with descriptions   Book list with titles and locations

Barnes & Noble – Provides reviews as well as reading and genre lists.

Bartleby.com – The preeminate internet publisher of literature, reference and verse providing students, researchers and the intellectually curious with unlimited access to books and information on the web, free of charge.

The Big Thrill – Get news and information on the latest thrillers along with in-depth stories and interviews PLUS a chance to win first edition signed thrillers by your favorite authors.

Bookbrowse – Provides “If you like…” lists of fiction.

Book Clubbish – Book reviews and suggestions for book club reading.

BookCrossing.com – Read and release your books into the wild! Tag your used books with a unique tracking number, then follow their travels through the world at BookCrossing, the world’s biggest book club.

BookMooch – Exchange books and trade them, like a book swap or book barter.

BookPage – A companion to the free newspaper the Library makes available.  BookPage is a monthly book review publication distributed through subscribing bookstores and public libraries. Founded in 1988, BookPage serves as a broad-based selection guide to the best new books published every month. All of the content from the print edition is posted on BookPage.com each month.

Books on the Knob – Bargain reads, free ebooks and book reviews for the Amazon Kindle, nook, kobo, Sony and other ereaders, along with some games, music, technology and computers tossed in now and then.

The British Library – The library holds over 13 million books, 920,000 journal and newspaper titles, 58 million patents, 3 million sound recordings, and more.

Criminal Element – Mystery novels, thrillers and true crime stories, plus original fiction, excerpts of new releases, daily blog posts, giveaways and more.

Digital Public Library of America – The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) brings together the riches of America’s libraries, archives, and museums, and makes them freely available to the world. It strives to contain the full breadth of human expression, from the written word, to works of art and culture, to records of America’s heritage, to the efforts and data of science. The DPLA aims to expand this crucial realm of openly available materials, and make those riches more easily discovered and more widely usable and used.

Good Reads – See what your friends are reading. Keep track of what you’ve read and organize your books into virtual bookshelves. Join a book club to discuss your favorite books. A better way to find good books to read!

Google Book Search – Find the perfect book for your purposes and discover new ones that interest you. Google’s collection of digitized books includes a large number of books related to Old English literature and language.

Gutenberg Library – Project Gutenberg offers over 50,000 free ebooks: choose among free epub books, free kindle books, download them or read them online.

HathiTrust – As a digital repository for the nation’s great research libraries, HathiTrust brings together the immense collections of partner institutions. It was conceived as a collaboration of the thirteen universities of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation and the University of California system to establish a repository for these universities to archive and share their digitized collections.

Library of Congress – A US federal resource of the Congress providing research material and updated database on virtually every topic.

LibraryThing – Catalogs your books online, easily, quickly and for free.

LibriVox – Provides free audiobooks from the public domain. There are several options for listening.

New York Public Library Digital Gallery – Free and open online access to hundreds of thousands digital images.

The Online Books Page – Listing over 30,000 free books available on the web.

The Open Library – In partnership with the Internet Archive and OpenLibrary.org, the Boston Public Library is excited to announce a new program to allow users and patrons to “Scan-on-Demand”. It’s easy and free! Books are delivered to you, electronically, in 5-7 days.

Oprah’s Book Club – Read along with Oprah’s Book Club and millions of other readers! Get in-depth book summaries and discussion questions for your book clubs.

Orlando: Women’s Writings in the British Isles -“A comprehensive electronic text-base relating to women’s writing in the British Isles.” (netconnect)

PaperBackSwap – Join their free book club and trade, swap, or exchange used books with other book club members absolutely free. Looking for free books? You’ll find tons of great used books to choose from.

Poetry Foundation – An independent literary organization committed to a vigorous presence for poetry in American culture.

poets.org – Repository of poetry, daily poems, free email subscription, featured poets and events.

Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography – Presents selected articles, books, and other printed and electronic sources that are useful in understanding publishing efforts on the Internet.

StoryPlace – A children’s digital library from the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County, North Carolina.

The Virtual Chase – Teaches legal professionals how to do research.

Whichbook.net – Whichbook gives readers an enjoyable and intuitive way to find books to match their mood. Instead of starting from the overwhelming choice of books available, whichbook starts from the reader and enables each individual to build the elements of that elusive ‘good read’ we are all looking for but don’t quite know how to define.

Wikibooks – Open-content textbooks.

WorldCat [OCLC] – Collections and services of more than 10,000 libraries worldwide.

Online Literary Journals – Looking for interesting art? Fresh, exciting poetry and prose? Innovative videos not available on You-Tube? Interviews with new artists in every genre? These on-line literary journals combine the written word with performance art offering a new take on literary journals: