u/rainyhidden

You can download ShelfLife here - my husband and I built it together as a passion project and it's completely free. The community has contributed over 1600 spines so far so you can use those or add your own. We're making improvements every day so we'd love any feedback!

It's been a great year for reading so far. My favorites were The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton, Crossroads by Franzen, and I just finished The Last Samurai by Helen Dewitt which I can't recommend enough - it's a genius book about education and parenthood, and structurally different to anything I've read before. Y/N was also a great work of experimental lit; it's about fandom and identity and a surprisingly smart, thought provoking book.

Hurricane Season and Virgin Suicides were rereads that I enjoyed over 5 years ago and both held up. Hurricane Season is one of the most gruesome books I've read but the writing is just so atmospheric and engrossing.

The Expendable Man was a fun old-school crime thriller that had an early twist that knocked the wind out of me. Its also a time capsule of 1960s western America that pulled me in.

The Director is a great work of historical fiction that explores timely questions around the complicity of the arts in the rise of fascism. I loved learning more about early cinema as well - it captures the sense of creativity and experimentation that accompanies any new medium of art.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - my second Muriel Spark and I just love her wit and how thoroughly she understands all her character's flaws. It feels like a really smart parody of movies like Dead Poets Society even though this book came out decades earlier. Something about the way Spark will suddenly insert a glimpse into a student's future really bowled me over. Jean Brodie herself is iconic and a great commentary about the role of teachers and the possible limits of education.

The Woman Who Wrote the Bible - I picked this up on a whim in a book store and really enjoyed it. It's a riff on a theory by Harold Bloom that parts of the Bible were written by a woman. In this book, it's the ugliest woman in King Solomon's harem who's desperately trying to get laid. It's really funny and surprisingly sweet. It doesn't have a lot reviews which is a shame, I really recommend it.

The Expendable Man - I chose this basically at random during the NYRB sale (my favorite publisher) and was really satisfied with this crime thriller. It's a gorgeous time capsule of Arizona before its population boom and there are some beautiful desert geography descriptions. There's an early twist about 50 pages in that was extremely well executed and changed the entire trajectory of the book. It's a fun balance of smart and pulpy. Great if you're in a reading slump.

Family Lexicon - Really interesting book by an Italian Jewish author about her family's experience during Mussolini's reign. It's about the people she loves and all their quirks but written in a very detached way. Sometimes it felt difficult to get a handle on who the author really is or how she feels but that made it hit harder when she does briefly let you in on something heartbreaking. The motifs of different family sayings are employed well and reinforce the central idea here about connection and community enduring despite oppression.

The Enormous Room - a book about the poet EE Cummings's experience in a quasi-prison in France during WWI. He has a very light and humorous outlook on his time there, and some moments were very funny. That said, it could be repetitive and probably overstayed its welcome by about 50 pages.

My husband and I built a book tracking app to address all the things I’ve ever wanted out of goodreads. Chiefly, a virtual shelf with actual spines that looks like my bookshelves at home. As shown in the video, you can drag books around, lay them flat, face them out, add decor, etc. 

Test flight: https://testflight.apple.com/join/nAgk2SDN
Play store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fisherbirdsoftware.shelflife

I don’t think a large public database of spines exists so I started building it myself. The app currently has about 600 spines from popular books from photos I’ve taken at Barnes and Noble and I’m adding more every day. Users can also add these themselves, and I’m hoping they do as I can’t possibly cover the range of books people are reading by myself. 

Other features:

• Profiles display a top 12 shelf so you can see someone’s taste at a glance.
• Book signal: Send out a request for recommendations based on one of your shelves or a couple of books you like, and match with users who have similar taste. 
• Peanut Gallery: in addition to regular reviews, after finishing a book you can enter the Peanut Gallery and post hot takes, spoilers, favorite quotes, etc. 
• Feats: Create custom challenges (eg. 1 classic a month, read the entire Dune Series, etc). Users can manually decide which books they’ve read that count towards the feat. 
• Import your existing data from goodreads

I would love some feedback on the app and any advice about how to keep users who are intrigued by the concept (the video featured here is doing decent numbers on instagram, 5.8% click through rate) but maybe disappointed that the books they add don’t yet have a spine. So far we’ve had a couple users trickle in that add a couple books then give up.

Thanks!