Scribd - The Book Lover's Paradise

Often we have an urge to express oursleves and bring out the writer in us. We also want to share the original content we have with us to the world. The advent of Internet only added up to this need and now we can find more and more blogs, ebooks all round the web. 

For a person who loves books in any form, Scribd is the ideal solution. The site provides wide variety of books and material on many areas in many formats like Word, Text, PDF, Pst Script, powerpoint, Excel and others. Scribd describes itself as a place where where you publish, discover and discuss original writings and documents. Be it any format which is readable, you can pload the document and share with the rest of the world.

The registration to the site is free and once we get registered, we can download a huge list of books and documents from the site. The site stats says that over 50000 documents are uploaded daily since the company started in 2007 so we can imagine the amount of content in that site. Not only that, the site has documents in 90 languages which means every one has a place for himself/herself.

As a reader, the site is well organized with books categorized in various sections right from brochrues & catlaogs to Business and Legal Documents. Searching for a particular book/document is made easy with various options. Once we found the book we need, we can either share it, send it through mail, embed that document into any of our sites, download  or take a print of the document. 

As a writer, you can write almost anything or upload any document we want to the site.We can publish the documents in many formats-PDF, Image, Text, Open Office, Excel, Powerpoint. Scribd has its own iPaper Document Reader which transorms all the PDFs, WORD and other file formats into an elegant web display. We can then share or work to the community of Scribd's passionate readers. Not only that, since every word of the document we are sharing or created is indexed for Search Enginr Optimization, the document can have  a wide reader base not only for the Scribd users but for the rest of the users as well.

Apart from downloading and sharing, we can also start a new community or join an existing community, discuss about the books/documents and start making our own network of book lovers.

the site also offers RSS features which brings all the updates or books created in the site right to your mailbox or to your favourite feed reader.

A must site for any book reader!!

How to dispose Old Books?

I am a reader who has a habit of collecting lots of books before reading them. Whenever I go to a shopping mall or a book shop, it is very rare that I dont come out with a book in hand. While I take time to read all of them at some point of time, I also piled up my house with lots of books. Some books- I re-read, some I keep for reference, some for show and others-just lying like that after the first reading. All the almirahs are filled with books, magazines.

While collecting books, reading and maitaning the books is possible, it also involves lot of cost, effort and time. For those who are in the constant transfers it is a even bigger headache of carying all the books from one place to other. For some, disposing the books is a very sentimental thing while some do it regularly by selling off to a local vendor who buys it by kgs and use it as a trash.

Today morning, after a long internal discussion, I decided to sell of my old books only to make space for the new ones. While googling, I stumbled upon a site on Internet to take care of this concern of disposing the books in a more productive way. The website URL tagline  says "Connect Buyers & Sellers :: Reduce Waste :: Save Trees" which immediately caught my attention. for those living in India, this site can be of good use as we can save a lot of resources for us. Instead of selling it to a raddiwala who either tears the books and sell the books to other shopkeepers for paper covers or for termites as a free meal, courtesy our saving habits, we can instead sell these books for those who need them.

BuySellOldBooks is the site I am referring to and I liked the interface of the site. Those who are interested in buying the books can those who want to sell their books can do the transactions here by registering into the site and make their offerings/requirements. It took me less than a minute to register and another few minutes to placemy offerings on the site.

How does this work?

If you are a Seller or Lender:

Step 1: Register a Free Account.

Step 2: You List a Book for Sale, Lend, or Exchange.

Step 3: Other Person sees your book & sends you a message through the website. If you provide a phone number, the buyer can call you. 

Step 4: You receive the message at your email address & send a reply to the other person's email address.

Step 5: You meet the other person at a public place and make the transaction.

Buyers or Borrowers:

Step 1: Search for old books to buy, borrow, or exchange. 

Step 2: When you find a book you like, send a message to the book owner through the website. Also, you can call the book owner if a phone number is provided. 

Step 3: The message is sent to the owner's email address. Then, the owner sends a reply to your email address.

Step 4: You meet the book owner at a public place.

Step 5: You and the book owner make the transaction!

Simpe, right? Now here's one more interesting thing:

You dont have to pay anything to this site!!!

So, go ahead, register, put your old books for sale, sell them and make money to buy new books!!

Self-help books -- Do we need them?

I like Self-help books. In fact, I read them more than I read other genre of books. But sometimes, I do get  a doubt if these books are useful for all. Do people really change after reading these books?

I asked myself the same question-did I change anything after reading those books? The answer is both "yes' and "no".  I dont say that the self-help books are life transforming books. They are just guides for our life to put us back on track. The reason why many people dont change is they expect a result from the book without effort. As the name says, they are "self-help" books which means they help us in helping oursleves rather than depending on others for which there needs an amount of effort from the reader.

If we look at any self-help book, we can see that there is nothing new that they are telling. Most of them are the "old wine in a new bottle" style except a very few of them. Those books only remind us what had been taught to us from our childhood but what we dont practice. And our mind, which already knows the content, treats the message conveyed in the book as a routine message and starts ignoring. And this is why most of the self-help books fail. It may be a marketing gimmick to come up with attactive titles only to tell us " Get up early in the morning, do exercise, eat breakfast and work hard".  But, I would say it's not the author's fault nor its is the book's fault. The fault lies with the reader who fails to register the message conveyed in the book.  Without effort, no result can be positive. 

As one of the quotes on the books goes, "There are no good books or bad books. Its only only the bad readers."

Frankly, I never gave this thought whether I am changing by reading these self-help books. All I used to feel is a sense of inspiration which lasts as long as I remember the book and when the new book comes, it's back to square one. So, to benefit from the self-help books, what we need is a will to benefit and constant practice of the known facts. My sincere thanks goes to the the author who pointed out that topic.

Currently, I am reading the "Megaliving" from Robin Sharma. Again, nothing new in that book that we dont know exept that the style of writing is effective and inspiring but the 30-day program the author suggested is really effective. I can see a change in my outlook towards life after undergoing the 30-day program. 

For those of you who want to purchase the book, they can purchase from Amazon site or from the local book stores.

Some Quotable Quotes on Reading

A good book on your shelf is a friend that turns its back on you and remains a friend.  ~Author Unknown


A book is the only place in which you can examine a fragile thought without breaking it, or explore an explosive idea without fear it will go off in your face.  It is one of the few havens remaining where a man's mind can get both provocation and privacy.  ~Edward P. Morgan


The worth of a book is to be measured by what you can carry away from it.  ~James Bryce


Anyone who says they have only one life to live must not know how to read a book.  ~Author Unknown


A good book should leave you... slightly exhausted at the end.  You live several lives while reading it.  ~William Styron, interview, Writers at Work, 1958


There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and a tired man who wants a book to read.  ~G.K. Chesterton


If there's a book you really want to read but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.  ~Toni Morrison

A good book has no ending.  ~R.D. Cumming

Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.  ~Charles W. Eliot

Always read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.  ~P.J. O'Rourke

I find television to be very educating.  Every time somebody turns on the set, I go in the other room and read a book.  ~Groucho Marx

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.  ~Mark Twain, attributed

A book reads the better which is our own, and has been so long known to us, that we know the topography of its blots, and dog's ears, and can trace the dirt in it to having read it at tea with buttered muffins.  ~Charles Lamb, Last Essays of Elia, 1833


Let books be your dining table,
And you shall be full of delights
Let them be your mattress
And you shall sleep restful nights.
~Author Unknown


I know every book of mine by its smell, and I have but to put my nose between the pages to be reminded of all sorts of things.  ~George Robert Gissing


A book is like a garden carried in the pocket.  ~Chinese Proverb


Books let us into their souls and lay open to us the secrets of our own.  ~William Hazlitt

My test of a good novel is dreading to begin the last chapter.  ~Thomas Helm

A dirty book is rarely dusty.  ~Author Unknown

You know you've read a good book when you turn the last page and feel a little as if you have lost a friend.  ~Paul Sweeney

It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.  ~Oscar Wilde

A book must be an ice-axe to break the seas frozen inside our soul.  ~Franz Kafka

Lord! when you sell a man a book you don't sell just twelve ounces of paper and ink and glue - you sell him a whole new life.  Love and friendship and humour and ships at sea by night - there's all heaven and earth in a book, a real book.  ~Christopher Morley

Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new after all.  ~Abraham Lincoln

The smallest bookstore still contains more ideas of worth than have been presented in the entire history of television.  ~Andrew Ross

Source: http://www.quotegarden.com/books.html