Book Glutton

In light of all the discussion about Amazon's Kindle bookreader, I thought people might find this crosspost from my blog interesting/useful:

I learned about Book Glutton from the Go2Web2 blog.

It's basically an online library of books in the public domain that allows you to leave notes on the pages that others can respond to, and also lets you "chat" with people who are reading the book at the same time.

One aspect that makes it particularly useful for teachers is that you can create private groups of readers, too.

I've never been a big fan of "literature circles" in classrooms, but I could see how some students might be more intrigued by this online version of one.

I just did a quick run-through of the books available, and they're clearly most appropriate for advanced English Language Learners.

It also gives you the option of uploading documents that you can make private or public. This would also be a great feature for teachers of all students, including English Language Learners, to broaden the options of texts for students to read.

Book Glutton is at an early stage right now. You can only try it by invitation, though I got one the same day I requested it. It can also only be used with Firefox for right now.

It seems like this might really have some potential....