Literary Book Gifts

Hi everyone! It's Lydia here! My monthly blog post went a bit downhill for the end of October, however I'm here now and ready to discuss a website with you all! This is a slightly different from the reviews I usually write, as they're mostly fashioned around books. Yet, this website is special because it's where all of us book nerds go to and find quotes and book art around our favourite novels. Today I'll be reviewing https://literarybookgifts.com

When first viewing the website I was greeted with a classic white and professional background, which instantly drew my attention to the colour of the products on the home page. The options of what to select were 'Women's Book T-Shirts', 'Book Tote Bags', 'Men's Book T-Shirts' and 'Gifts for Book Lovers', which turn a darker shade of grey when selected. Then underneath this, there was a lovely selection of classic literary fiction gifts ranging from Frankenstein t-shirts to Emily Dickinson tote bags.

Clicking onto the women's t-shirt section, there's a refreshing display of different clothing laid side-by-side presenting a good range of size selection from XS - 3XL. Each t-shirt has a diverse selection of colours that you don't see on most websites. Clicking specifically on the Dracula t-shirt, I initially liked the colour combination of red and black, but the choice of red and white also gave an interesting contrast. I even found some novels that I've never heard of before, for example, 'The Call of the Wild' and 'In Search of Lost Time'.

Moving onto the tote bags, each one is beautifully designed and the material looks strong and durable. I personally prefer the tote bags as the large font and design is pleasing to the eye, and like the t-shirts there is a wide selection of fiction. However, if you want a more simplistic design that isn't based around a book, there are some intriguing style bags with headphone sets and typewriters. What really surprised me was there were also some products that displayed famous science essays and even some philosophers!

Now for my top five favourite products: 1. Dracula t-shirt, 2. Jane Eyre t-shirt, 3. Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde tote bag,  4. Typewriter tote bag, 5. Emily Dickinson tote bag.

Overall, I think this website is fantastic and really cute! So I encourage all our readers to go and check it out! Here is the link again: https://literarybookgifts.com

P.S. The owner of this lovely website has given our team a 20% discount code ECCENTRICTRILOGY20, this includes anything on the website, no minimum and does not expire.

Shelf Joy

Generally, we stick to just posting book requests, creative writing pieces and author interviews, but we were contacted by Shelf Joy last week and felt their site may interest some of you readers!

Shelf Joy is a free website for avid readers to discover books similar to those they are reading. The site uses a bot which basically takes the genre or book you’re reading and looks across a ‘shelf’ of other books that may be of interest to you. This makes finding a new book easier and faster.

Alternatively, you can speak to the bot by messenger (which isn’t as scary as it sounds!). The bot will give you a few options of what to say to it in a button format, so you just have to click the answer. For instance, after requesting to ‘Show Shelves’, I was able to click the arrow on the messenger shown below to find different categories, and when I felt satisfied with the choice I’d made (in this case science books for non-scientists), I clicked ‘Explore this shelf’ to get some books recommended. As you can see below, there are a few minor technical problems as the messages from the bot tend to send twice, but it replies instantaneously and gives you the cover of a book, its rating and a brief description, so the positives outweigh the negatives.

As I don’t use Twitter, I found that I was unable to login to the site, but this didn’t matter too much – regardless of having a login, you are allowed to find the ‘shelves’ you are interested in by typing in the genre required, for instance ‘women-writers’, then explore books on that shelf. The site is really easy to use and I’m glad to report it did not pry for any personal details, there are no pop-ups or adverts. The only other aspect that could be bettered is if the site was to have an 'about' section clearly marked that explained what it does for any new users.

Overall, it’s got a neat appearance and makes scouring for books a lot easier, though the website still has room to improve I’m sure it’ll thrive in popularity in the years to come!