3...2...1 We're ready for public premiere - BookLikes goes live! For the time being BookLikes has been in beta phase with invites only but TODAY we’re moving on with full public release!  We know that there's still a lot to be done but we think it’s high time for public opening. We couldn’t have done it without you - thank you for creating BookLikes with us! We appreciate all your help and would like to ask you a huge favor: Help us spread the word :-) 

Recent several months were very busy and engaging for us. We were creating BookLikes from scratch, developing and improving service along with your suggestions. Thanks to your help we managed to set up an awesome place for book bloggers, reviewers, writers, avid readers - simply for all book lover from all over the world.

Now we have to make the nosie. Help us make the buzz and make everyone hear about BookLikes :-)

We’ll be going online, loud and clear and reaching various media: press, online, they will hear about us even on the Moon but we’ll be gratefull for your help as well.

If you know a place on the Web that would be interested in BookLikes, where we could knock and present ourselves,  send press release and info about BookLikes, please let us know in comments or at contact@booklikes.com. If you know a person, a site or service interested in books, book reviews, authors or publishers give us a tip where we can write and introduce BookLikes or to whom we can say "Hi". And if you know other book lovers, simply invite them to share their reading life. 

We know we ask a lot and if you prefer to stay a viewer and reader instead of speaker, it’s all fine too. But if you agree to help us we’ll be more than grateful :-)

All BookLikes Team would like to say warm and loud Thank you! for all your help and support. We listened and applied your suggestions and we all hope that you love the outcome. We appreciate all the feedback and take into consideration every remark. We’re not stopping here - we still have many ideas to show up and many of your wishes to fulfill :-)

We discover with eyes, we eat with eyes, we buy with eyes. We judge with eyes. Yes, we tend to be objective and think that we don't judge book by its cover but actually we do. Quite often. And now when our hands are full of ereaders we can judge ereader by its cover. And why not?

Everything what is made personally and what is individualized is more beautiful. Well, it's unique. I love handmade ereader sleeves and covers. Here are some of my picks.

Knitted sleeve - I knew how to knit some time ago, maybe I'll come back to it some day.

Leather cover from Oberon Design - great in touch and smell.

Photo customized cover - I think this theme of rustic wood and metal ring is extraordinary. Actually it can be any of your favorite photo. Great idea.

Old Book Covers Recycling - the instruction says "any old book covers" but I assume it can be any metarial, including plastic or wooden boards. Then make a

'sandwitch' and sew it :-)

Cute felt cover - you can do it by yourself with any fabric, create any pattern or image and with sewing machine.

Have you ever done an eareder cover/sleeve by yourself? I'm curious :-)

As I mentioned some time ago (if you still remember, I know it was several weeks ago) I wanted to rearranged my home based library. I was choosing from seven solutions that I've picked for possible usage:

1. Rainbow Shelves - nice to watch

2. Alphabetical library standard - good to find

3. Literary genres - literary order

4. Book sizes - neat and steady

5. Publishing houses - 'family' order

6. Random - oh well, let it be here

7. Human bookshelf ;-)

So I started my project for serious. I've finished it in March as I previously planned but somehow lacked time to show off my outcome till now. So let's start and be honest.

I was defeated. All six solutions weren't for me.

When I cleared my shelves, put all books on my sofa, cleaned them from dust and started rearrangement I understood that none of the above solution is accurate for me. Let's be honest (as I promised) I'm a little messy person and quasi ordered bookcase wouldn't change that. Well arranged bookshelf wouldn't really represent me.

My motivation was big but it appeared that I discovered other solution which origins from ... my virtual bookshelf. How I could not think of it previously?

So I started from the beginning. And then it was obvious! I had to put my books on "Read" shelf, "Planning to read" shelf and "Currently reading" shelf - sounds familiar? I did as I thoughts. Additionally I created thematic shelves as well for: languages, reference, work and hobby.

Maybe it doesn't look great like 'rainbow bookcase' nor neat like size order and alphabetical list but for me it's lucid. And what's most important - it's mine.

Found my bookshelf standard which looks something like this:

:)

The saying There's nothing pleasant about old age can change its meaning if you have so many adventures and luck as Allan is his 100-year life. His life story is such increadible that it seems that it could acctually happen! What we experience is a world history lesson seen and told by Allan in a sarcastic, funny way deprived dead serious tone. I would love to have more such fascinating history lessons.

We meet Allan in unusual circumstances - when he's escaping from nursing home just before his birtyday party. He clambered out of his room through a window and went towards a railway station without a specific plan but having already many urban obstacles to overcome (like a fence). When I "met' Allan on the first pages I thought that he's humble and a little bit silly, maybe because of his age or personality. But when I immersed into book deeper and deeper I realized that Allan the 100-year old or not had bigger guts than many other man and quite a story to tell! I was fascinated.

Allan's story is lead in two different tracks: before the escape (his life time story - and there's a lot to be discovered) and after escape. Stories are presented in chapters in turns so we are abreast of his past and ongoing adventures. So in the way we have two separate stories, one about 'young' Allan and the second about the old Allan. Two stories meet in mentioned window creating men’s a full life story and overview of world history of XX century at the same time.

Allan has not only witnessed the most important events of this period, he had a direct impact on them. He created them and took part in them, unconscious of their significance for the whole world. During his long and active life Allan met Franco, Stalin, Churchill, Truman, Mao, de Gaulle... He invented and ruined (usually by using explosives), escaped and got caught, travelled, met people and lost them, helped and received help, got imprisoned and escaped again. All those history-based plot are nicely bond together and create world’s map of stories. They are actually reasonable and hilarious at the same time.

The ongoing story is not better (or maybe it is). As Allan reached mentioned railway station, he instantly got involved in a mystery, crime scene, police chase but also in friendship and love. First he’s declared as a missing person, later as an assassin. Can anything go more wrong? With a troupe of accidently met people and a huge suitcase stuffed with many? Everything! But Allan like a cat with 9 lives have  survived much more.

The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared is a book of many stories and many emotions. It gave me a real pleasure of reading and laughing with this specific sense of humour. Everything works here. One fault is that there's so many of everything that on same pages I had headache. But that’s really a minor drawback.

Did what I thought and already feeling better!

I feel tremendous guilt towards the books I ignore.

The following quote haunts me recently. My reading hunger is not fulfilled but the clock is ticking, time is passing by, books are getting covered with dust and even buying them is postponed because of growing number of TBR books. I would like to touch every book genre - because how can you tell that you like or dislike something without trying it first?

With books it's the same. This year I had resolution to read more classics. Nearly three months passed and I've read all other genres but classics. So now I feel guilty because of that. But then if I ended up reading something else, I would feel guilty of not reading something else... And so on and on. Bookish Vicious circle. 

I would like to read all books of the world, classics, fantasy, awarded reads, business related, horrors, romances, chick lit, literary, mystery, thriller, YA, nonfiction ... Of course, I can read faster (can I?), I can skim books, enroll to fast reading course (is it working anyway?), stop sleeping or working (kidding) but then how can you "live through the book". You know what I mean? There are some books that are still back in your head when you finish reading them and don't want to unstick.

You need to think about the book, mull it over, absorb, adapt, take a stance, identify with characters and then go back to yourself. This process has to be over and only then you can grab another book. At least me. Should I resign from this process? Can I resign? Or maybe should I pick books in different way? But then where is this pleasure?

For me, book choice always was a free choice and not official list of books chosen in advance. My book choice is time sensitive. I often choose books that fit my current emotions. Can I resign from that? Would I want to?

But telling the truth, as far as I appreciate book choice freedom, I feel imprisoned by this rule at the same time. As if it wouldn't give me space but limits. Maybe it would be better to follow some kind of reading plan? Would I read more then? Do we need external motivation to read more?

Oh, why there are so many books and only one Me. But anyway, is it really possible to read all books you ever wanted to read?

Death and what comes after was always a gripping book theme and many authors presented various scenarios that could be possible which often couldn’t go together, like zombieland and dream paradise. But Afterwards by Rosamund Lupton  isn’t about death as such. Is clinical death really a death? Where are we when we’re not in our body? Well, characters in Afterwards were trying to figure out who wanted to kill them.

Novel tells the story of mom who tried to rescue her teen daughter from awful fire. They both ended by in the hospital with severe injuries and in coma. And they both left their bodies and met on the ward to get to know that the fire wasn’t an accident but arson and that police is getting it all wrong. The only hope lays in Grace’s (mom’s)  not so favorite sister-in-law who shamelessly pushes forward and wants to resolve the mystery as much as she wants both girls to wake up and stay alive. But the clock is ticking, tick tack, tick tack … and the chances for  both things are getting smaller and smaller.

I didn’t fall into the mystery. Although it presented some twists and turns and false tracks, it wasn’t really reliable or so surprising as the author would like it to be. But I think the author didn’t fall for mystery either. I think Rosamund Lupton wanted to focus on relationships, emotions, empathy, inner strength and love. And I suppose she did well here. As the story goes we get to know mom and daughter a little better with their hopes, fears and full bags of emotions. Their strength to know what really happened is as strong as their will to survive. But all they can do is to watch, listen, follow and sometimes get to know more than others who try to figure out what happened. This forced passivity is the worst thing I can imagine in this state. You don't have influence on anything or power to do anything. Or maybe you do?

I'll leave you with this open question next to Afterwards - the book about eternal parental love. 

I’m a freshman in ebook revolution and e-ink reading experience and I still have warm feelings towards paper books, but now when I finally bought a Kindle I suppose my virtual bookshelf will be more often visited so it’s high time to make some cleanup on my home-based bookshelf which is in a total mess and begging me to take care of it. So now I have a dilemma, how to arrange my books? I hope that this arrangement will last more that couple of days (as I’m scatterbrain in this respect) so I want to do it decently.

I suppose several solutions can be applied:

Solution no. 1. As a female and in contrast to some men (including my partner) I diversify more than standard colors and they really matter to me. I saw somewhere this ‘rainbow’ bookcases and loved it. However, I’m not sure whether books should be only treated as decorations. How I will find a given title? As far as I enjoy looking and judging book covers, I rarely remember book band’s color.

Solution no. 2. To make book search easier I suppose I should apply library standard and alphabetical order and author’s shelves. I enjoy reading series and I’m quite loyal to authors that I enjoy reading so that’s not a bad idea. But what about book themes?

Solution no. 3. Maybe I should shelve then according to literary genres? Then single books would get it’s right place and it would be much easier to follow my reading preferences in real life, not only on virtual bookshelf.

Solution no. 4. It seems that everything is easier on virtual shelves as book sizes doesn't matter so much here. So maybe book arrangements by it’s format would be better. Actually that could look nice and neat, however, the problem with book search could occur here as well.

Solution no. 5. Well, books from the same publishing house have the same format, cover color shades, similar typography, including covers. That would be something! Right, if I didn’t have single books from different publishers and I have quite a lot of them. That sounds like a mess again.

Solution no. 6. There’s still another solution possible, meaning random book stock. Place as it goes, put it on a pile and pray that it didn't fall down on you.

What do you think? I appreciate any advices. Do you have your own ideas for book arrangements on you home based bookcases? I’m curious :-) 

P.S. Human bookshelf looks intriguing. However, I need to resign from this idea, it's totally impractical ;-)

Our first meeting was very emotional. So far I've noticed that it's extremely dangerous (to my wallet mainly) to have a non-stop access to Kindle Store!

And now we have to know each other a little better, so, please, do not disturb :-)

P.S. I love it!