LibraryThing: State of the Thing - November

LibraryThing: State of the Thing Dear {NAME}, Welcome to the November 2020 State of the Thing. We've got SantaThing, an Obama group read, 2,965 free books, continuing design changes, and another $1,000 employee book bounty. If you'd rather receive a plain-text version, [edit your email preferences](. You can also read it [online](. You can like LibraryThing on [Facebook]( and follow [@LibraryThing]( on Twitter for up-to-the-minute site news and updates. SantaThing! [SantaThing Banner]( Every year since 2006, LibraryThing has run [SantaThing](, our bookish "Secret Santa." The idea is simple: Sign up for $15–$50. You'll get to pick books for another member, and someone will pick books for you. This year we're going with indie bookstores. The pandemic has been a disaster for independent bookstores, even as it sent Amazon sales to new heights. We can't imagine a world without local bookstores, so we picked five of our staff's favorite indies from around the United States, and they agreed to be SantaThing helpers. - [BookPeople]( in Austin, TX - [RiverRun Bookstore]( in Portsmouth, NH - [Left Bank Books]( in St. Louis, MO - [King’s English Bookshop]( in Salt Lake City, UT - [Powell’s Books]( in Portland, OR To support these stores, we have dropped Amazon for regular book orders. We hope members understand and support us here. You can still order Kindle and Nook ebooks, and we have Book Depository for members outside the United States. Sign-ups close Monday, November 30th at 12pm EDT. » [Sign up for SantaThing]( New Remote Job: Find LibraryThing A Great Developer This month we're advertising a brand new remote job, to bring LibraryThing up to three full-time developers. You can read about the job on the blog. A new developer will help us bring LibraryThing where it needs to go. But we need your help to spread this to interested developers. Best of all, if you can find LibraryThing that developer, you get $1,000 in books from a bookstore of your choice. » [Find out more]( Group Read: A Promised Land [Barack Obama]('s new memoir, [A Promised Land](, is out and it's such a gargantuan deal in bookland that they [moved the Booker Awards]( to avoid its publication date. Selling 887,000 copies on the first day, it's at the top of LibraryThing's [Hot This Month]( list, and is or will shortly head lesser lists, such as Amazon, USA Today, and the New York Times. In it Obama describes his political rise and the first years of his presidency. He also wrestles with his legacy and the unexpected and unwelcome reversal that followed his departure. And he can write. We've set up a group read in LibraryThing's "One LibraryThing, One Book" group, and set up a tentative reading schedule: Monday, November 30. Part One. Monday, December 7. Part Two and Three. Monday, December 14. Part Four and Five. Monday, December 21. Part Six and Seven. Come join the [One LibraryThing, One Book]( group and join in! Free Books! [Early Reviewers]( is our program where you can win free advance copies of books to read and review. [Sign up]( to request books. Our [November batch]( of Early Reviewers has 2,963 copies of 91 books. The deadline to request a book is November 30, 6pm Eastern. Design Updates We continue to work hard behind the scenes to move LibraryThing to a new infrastructure that will make it easier and faster for us to make changes and improve the site as well as updating the style and interface of LibraryThing. Last month we updated Talk to use the new "LT2" infrastructure. This month we made dozens of improvements and fixes to Talk based on feedback from members, some of which include: - Style picker and font change. LibraryThing has used the Verdana typeface from the beginning; with LT2 we changed to the default system font for whatever system you are on. The idea was that it better blends in with the rest of your system and apps. After member feedback, however, we've reverted to Verdana. If you liked the new fonts, however, don't despair: we've introduced a style picker, so you can control some of the look and feel of LibraryThing, choosing between Verdana, the aforementioned system font, and even a serif font. Your style selection is saved per device, so you can have different settings on your phone and desktop computer and tablet. The "Change Style" feature is at the bottom of LT2 pages. - Desktop View. If you don't like how LibraryThing looks on your smartphone, you can now revert to the "Desktop View." You can find it at the bottom of all new pages. - Unread Colors. Unread Talk posts now have a [non-color indicator](, for colorblind members. We also tried a few different color combinations for showing read vs. unread topics before settling on the current colors based on member feedback. Hot This Month - [A Promised Land]( by [Barack Obama]( - [The Sentinel]( by [Lee Child]( - [The Silence]( by [Don DeLillo]( - [A Time for Mercy]( by [John Grisham]( - [Memorial: A Novel]( by [Bryan Washington]( - [The Once and Future Witches]( by [Alix E. Harrow]( - [The Searcher]( by [Tana French]( - [Legendborn]( by [Tracy Deonn]( - [A Song for the Dark Times]( by [Ian Rankin]( - [Ring Shout]( by [P. Djèlí Clark]( - [Black Sun (Between Earth and Sky)]( by [Rebecca Roanhorse]( - [Snow]( by [Benjamin Black]( - [The 99% Invisible City: A Field Guide to the Hidden World of Everyday Design]( by [Roman Mars]( - [Leave the World Behind]( by [Rumaan Alam]( - [The Devil and the Dark Water](by [Stuart Turton]( - [Spellbreaker]( by [Charlie N. Holmberg]( - [Invisible Girl]( by [Lisa Jewell]( - [The Midnight Library: A Novel](by [Matt Haig]( - [Magic Lessons: The Prequel to Practical Magic]( by [Alice Hoffman]( - [Miss Benson's Beetle: A Novel]( by [Rachel Joyce]( TinyCat [TinyCat]( is the online catalog for small libraries, created by LibraryThing. It turns your existing LibraryThing account into a simple, professional, web-based catalog. Join LibraryThing staffer Kristi for a live demo of TinyCat just twice more until after the holidays: December 2 and December 9 at 1pm EDT, [link here](. You can also check out our playlists of Tiny Tutorials on [LibraryThing’s YouTube channel](, where Kristi walks you through various features of TinyCat in 30 seconds or less. If you’d like to schedule a webinar at another time or if you have other questions about TinyCat, you can reach Kristi at tinycat@librarything.com. That's it! - Tim This message was sent to {NAME}. 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