Here’s an interesting booky site I stumbled across during my daily journey around the Web, whose name casts up childhood memories of covert reading under the bed covers. Flashlight Worthy, the brainchild of Peter Steinberg and Eric Mueller, is a ‘booklist’ website with a difference. Aside from being clean and crisp (a refreshing change), it presents its book recommendation lists grouped into themes. Lists go from general groupings such as ‘fiction‘, ‘humor‘, ‘children’s books‘ etc., to more specific themes such as ‘author complete works, award winners etc. The lists even go ‘super specific’ with topics such as ‘Some of the Best Books About 9/11‘ and ‘The Best Books on Raising Urban Chickens‘…errr ok?!?
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Flashlight Worthy, in “Listopia-esque’ fashion also presents lists from from selected guests and bloggers, which really brings extra value and a sense of community to the place. However, unlike most ‘list making’ sites that allows self submission, lists from bloggers are emailed in and the site owners decide the ones they wish to include. I think this is a great idea because it not only keeps everything in that clean and orderly state I love, it’s also keeps with the ‘hand picked’ ethos that the site owners seem focused on promoting.
Flashlight Worthy is still in beta, so compared to similar sites it’s kind of sparse (especially around ‘Author’s Complete Works‘) but I think it’s got great potential. I really like it!!
If I have one gripe, it’s related to the direct links of the books in the lists to Amazon – it’s not clear whether these are affiliate links or not. I’ve no problem if they are (goodness knows these guys need compensated for all of their time and effort), but for the ethical side of things it would be nice if this were made clear either way.
