Archive for August, 2009

Question of the Week #40: Life Imitates Art

Here’s a great question submitted by reader femmebot (thanks!).

Along the lines of life imitating art/art imitating life, which book(s) seem to resemble your life?

Head to our Question of the Week forum to weigh in.

Maintenance

We will be upgrading some systems tonight to be able to provide you an even better service in the future!  We expect DailyLit to be offline from 11pm Eastern for about 30 minutes.

For status updates please follow DailyLit on Twitter.

Update: 11:20pm Maintenance is finished and DailyLit is back online.

Question of the Week #39: Paper vs. Pixels

Lots of us love curling up with a paperback book in bed. But we also read books online by DailyLit.

We’re curious: how does reading books digitally differ for you from reading paper books? What do you like/dislike about each?

Head to our Question of the Week forum to share your thoughts.

Question of the Week #38: Books on Repeat

Which book have you read over and over? Why? Head to our Question of the Week forum to find out which books people have on repeat.

Thanks to “tristiseye” for suggesting this week’s question!

The Inspiration Behind the 6-Word Memoir

It’s great that you’ve been enjoying our “____ in 6 Words” Reader Challenges. (This month’s challenge: Summer Vacation in 6 Words.) We wanted to highlight the inspiration behind the 6-word memoir: SMITH Magazine. Their Six-Word Memoir project is based on the idea that everyone has a story, and everyone should have a place to tell it. The place? Their website, to start, which has a lively community of folks sending in 6-word stories every day. They’ve even published a book of their favorites, Not Quite What I Was Planning, and have another one planned. So keep working on those 6-worders! You might be able to see your name in print.

Question of the Week #37: Where to?

August is a popular vacation month. If you could take a vacation to the world of any book (i.e. Dickens’ London or F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Roaring 20s), which would you choose? Go to our Question of the Week forum to share your reponse and see where other folks would go.

DailyLit News: August 2009

Note from the CEO
We’re thrilled to announce that DailyLit was selected to be the #1 Book Website by The Sunday Times (thanks, Sunday Times!) And thanks to all of you who have contributed ideas and enthusiasm which help spur us on to make DailyLit better and better. In fact, in our effort to continually improve, we have a survey we hope you’ll fill out.

Thanks again for all your support.

Sincerely,
Susan Danziger
Founder and CEO, DailyLit
susan@dailylit.com

NPR’s List of “Best Beach Reads Ever”
Our usual Big Read is on vacation this month (it’s August, after all!). Instead, we thought we’d highlight books on DailyLit that made NPR’s list of “Best Beach Reads Ever” (as determined by its audience). Here they are—all available for FREE on DailyLit:
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen;
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain;
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy;
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas;
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott;
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll;
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte;
Dracula by Bram Stoker;
and Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. FREE for the taking.

Get Organized, Get Away, Get Thrills: New Books on DailyLit
—Get Organized: Staying organized doesn’t come easily to most kids—or to most parents for that matter. I’m definitely signing up for this series on Organizing the Disorganized Child: Tips and Tricks. It’s being made available for FREE on DailyLit thanks to HarperStudio, which is coming out with Organizing the Disorganized Child this fall.

—Get Away: August may be a popular vacation month, but if you can’t get away, escape with our Travel Books. Check out the 100 Places Every Woman Should Go or head out on safari with Whatever You Do, Don’t Run: True Tales of a Botswana Safari Guide.

—Get Thrills: If you’d rather read for thrills, we’re offering more short stories from best-selling author Jeffery Deaver in More Twisted and a pulp sci-fi classic, Star Ways, by award-winning author Poul Anderson.
Reader Challenge: Summer in 6 Words
With summer starting to wind down (ugh, can’t believe I said that!), this month’s reader challenge highlights a favorite back-to-school assignment. Tell us what you did on your summer vacation in—you guessed it—six words, and share your odes to summertime in our Reader Challenge Forum.
Tips and Tricks on DailyLit

Here are some useful tips you may not know that can help make DailyLit even easier to use:

—Customize: You can completely customize the delivery date, time, format (HTML or plain-text), and length (normal, 2X, or 4X) of your installments. Click on “Advanced” while you’re signing up for a book or click on the “Manage Your Book Settings” link at the end of any installment—then click on “More” next to the name of the book you want to edit.

—Connect: You can link your DailyLit profile to Twitter to let your followers know what you’ve been reading, become a fan of DailyLit on Facebook, and log in to DailyLit using Twitter, Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Windows Live, MySpace, AOL, and OpenID. Oh, and you can follow @DailyLit on Twitter, too!

—Keep Track: You can create Booklists on DailyLit to keep track of books you like or books you want to read. And, when you finish your current book, the next book on your To-Read list will automatically start coming to you.

—Show Off: Show your friends what you’re reading by putting the DailyLit book roll onto your blog. Login to DailyLit and you’ll see a link to “Add a book roll to your blog” under the “Your Widgets” heading.

—Keep Up: If sometimes your scheduled installments don’t appear, don’t worry. Check your spam folder to see if they ended up there. If not, you can easily resend installments to yourself by following the directions here.

Question of the Week #36: If You Were Guy Montag

This week a DailyLit reader’s question takes center stage. “beattifickid89″ wondered which books you would memorize if you were Guy Montag from Fahrenheit 451. Head to the original thread to share your response.