Hello all you CollegeCandy bookworms! If you missed the post last week, we are starting up our very own book club. Each month, we will select a novel (using your suggestions, of course!) and then meet back here on the last Saturday of that month to discuss it. Without further ado, I’d like to announce that the inaugural pick of the CollegeCandy Book Club is…

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson! Many of you recommended it and I’ve been wanting to read the book before I see the movie, so it worked out well. If you’ve already read our choice, you’re ahead of the game! Choose another novel you’d like to read for the month and then meet us back here on the 28th to discuss The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

If you still need to pick up a copy, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is available on amazon.com for about $10, but I’m willing to bet one of your neighbours has a copy lying around.

Calling all CollegeCandy-reading bookworms out there. It’s been a blast reviewing books for you for the past few years, but we’ve recently decided to change things up a bit. I’ve been getting book recommendations from you guys since the dawn of the Saturday Read series and I’m finally going to do something about it, by starting the CollegeCandy Book Club. What does that mean?

For the next 12 months I’m inviting you, the readers, to join in and read the chosen book for each month. Then, we’ll meet back here and discuss! Some of my previous reviews have started book club-like debates, and we’re hoping to keep that up!

So what’s first? We need some books! If you have a recommendation for the CollegeCandy Book Club, please leave it below, with the reason why you’re recommending it. I’ll be choosing 12 unique books for the year, some new, some classics, some quirky, you get the drill. I can’t wait to see your picks and launch this long-awaited venture. Thanks!

As college students, we do a lot of reading. And while I love to read, I don’t love how much I can spend on textbooks each semester. Which is why I’m always looking for the best deal when it comes to books — so imagine how excited I was when I discovered I could save money on my books for my English classes by reading the them online for free on sites like Litfy!

While there are other places online that you can download and read classic books for free, Lifty gets points for their colorful, modern layout. It’s also easy to find the book you want by searching by author name, title, or keyword. There are thousands of books currently on the site, and more are added each day!

Another great feature of Litfy is their forum where you can connect with other literature lovers and discuss the books you’re reading on the site. Or use the forum to ask questions you come across while studying a text, and maybe someone can help!

What I really love about Litfy — and why it’s a great site for college students like me and you — is the ability to annotate the book. With Litfy, you can highlight a portion of the page, make notes, or bookmark your place. So instead of bringing a book to class, or having to pay for printing out sections (and wasting paper), you can pull up the important parts for your class discussion right on your laptop! This also makes it easy to find the important quotes when you’re writing papers! You can do pretty much everything with Litfy that you can do with a book, except electronically.

Litfy has quickly become one of my favorite sites — I love anything that makes my life easier and saves me money!

Whether I’m talking on the phone and doing chores at the same time, or chatting on Facebook, doing schoolwork, and watching Glee, I’m always multi-tasking — which is why I like things that make my life easier.

Float helps with that by conveniently putting all my favorite web content all in one place. Now I don’t need to have separate tabs open for Facebook, Twitter, and my favorite blogs and websites.

To start using Float, connect with Facebook and/or Twitter to access those accounts, read news and magazines and discover new content from posts from your friends that are also using Float. Add your favorite websites and blogs to receive content from that onto your page as well.

There’s also a bookmarklet that you can add to your browser’s toolbar, which easily allows you to add content that you come across while browsing the web to your Float account to read later.

Float is also available as a really cool iPhone app, so you can read on the go! Apps for Android and iPad are also coming soon. And the best part is, it’s all free to use!

Thanks to Float, I can now read all my important content quickly and easily — leaving me more time to multitask with everything else I have to do!

With all the reading we’re assigned in our college course load, it’s hard to remember a time when reading was for fun. As kids, we were given the freedom to chose what book we wanted to write a report on.

Now, not only are we rarely assigned fiction books, we’re forced to read essays, and speeches, and scientific reports. But if you remember far back enough, you’ll remember a time when you were excited to get to the next chapter of your book. A time when you were disappointed to put away your book for lights out. A time when every book had a cute love interest. Take a break from whatever dry, small-print reading you’re doing to look back on the books you actually enjoyed.

initiating the gallery...

It seems like new social shopping sites (like Groupon) are popping up every day. Some of them are even specifically focused on one thing, such as vacations, wine, shoes, and more. One of the newest sites I’ve come across is Bookperk, a Groupon-like site geared towards readers.

Bookperk pairs new bestselling books with exclusive merchandise and/or experiences that are only available to members of the site. Some of the current offers available right now are copy of Emily Post’s Ettiquitte along with a package of thank you cards and the Cowboys and Aliens graphic novel and movie poster. And like other shopping sites, the deals change daily, so if you find something you love, don’t wait too long or it might be gone!

Once you sign up for Bookperk (it’s totally free), you’ll start getting newsletters with all the daily perks. The deals are great and they offer a lot of different genres, so there’s something for everyone. You may even be able to cross a few Christmas presents off your list early!

As a total book lover, I think this site is pretty cool. I can’t wait to purchase my first perk!

As college students, we spend hours on reading assignments every week (or at least we’re assigned hours of reading). With all that reading, it’s hard to find time for much else! It’s hard to have to choose between studying hard and having fun. I hate to admit it, but I choose the fun option more frequently than I should — and I know I’m not the only one.

If only you could get your reading done faster and still have time to have fun! Well, with Readfa.st, you can.

Readfa.st teaches you to read faster, but unlike some types of speed reading, which teach you to how to skim, Readfa.st teaches you to actually read faster and still comprehend what you read — meaning you can get all your reading done and still remember what you read when it comes time for the test.

Here’s how it works: pull up an article you want to read in your internet browser and click on the bookmarklet that you download to your browser toolbar. Readfa.st then scrolls the text across the screen, one line at a time. Readfa.st keeps track of how fast you should be reading and keeps you at that pace for the entire article. If the text you want to read isn’t online, you can also copy and paste text directly into Readfa.st.

As with any talent, learning to read faster takes time and practice, so by constantly challenging yourself by forcing you to read faster, your brain will learn to read faster naturally.

And best of all, Readfa.st is completely free to use. Soon, you’ll be finishing your reading assignments faster, leaving you with more free time!

I’m a big reader, but I know that not everyone feels the same — some people I know would much rather watch a movie than read a book. I get it — movies have awesome special affects, scores and sound effects that make the whole experience more exciting. But now there’s a new App that aims to make reading more like watching a movie!

Booktrack takes your e-reading experience to another level by adding a soundtrack. Booktracks  are e-books that play music and sound effects to go along with the story you’re reading. So, as the website explains, if you’re reading about the character in the book is at a nightclub, you’ll hear club music, or if you’re reading about war, you’ll hear the sound of soldier’s footsteps marching. What’s more, Booktrack tracks your reading speed and changes the music and effects to fit what you’re reading at the time.

Way cool, right?

Booktrack is still brand new, so they only have a few titles, but I’m sure  Booktracks are available for download for iPhone and iPad at the iTunes App store (support for Android, Macs/PCs and other devices are coming soon). Some titles are free to download, while others cost an affordable $1 to $4.

I can’t wait to start building my Booktrack library!

There are over 100 million sites on the Internet. 100 million! You might think you know about all the important ones (CollegeCandy, Gmail, Google, Facebook…), but there are thousands of other sweet sites out there (like Stingy Campus, BlogLovin and Exercise TV) and more showing up every day! We get it – it’s not easy or fun sifting through the crap and porn to find those gems, so we’re gonna bring the gems to you. Just sit back, kick up those feet and allow us to introduce you to the diamonds in the internet rough.]

One of the first things that crosses my mind after I finish reading a book (after the initial sadness that the book is over) is what I should read next. However, I’ve recently discovered a site that takes all the guesswork out of finding new books to read: Any New Books?, a free service that notifies you of new book releases that fit your interests.

To get started using this service, simply provide your e-mail address and select the categories that interest you from a list of 42 subjects (such as self-help, history, science fiction, and practically anything else you can imagine). That’s it! You’ll now receive a weekly e-mail of new book releases for each topic you select (so if you select five topics, you’ll get five separate e-mails). Each e-mail includes the publishing information for each book and a link to purchase the book online.

To make sure they’re only providing the best selections, Any New Books? uses a human editor to sort through the new releases instead of an automated program, which helps create a list that appeals to a wider audience and just adds an extra touch that you don’t get from a computer algorithm.

Using Any New Books? will keep you informed by updating you on all the new books being released and will help prevent you ever again having to ask the dreaded question, “what should I read next?”

Remember when you were a little kid, and you’d actually wake up on time for school… just so you could huddle next to the radio and listen for your school to be called on the list of snow days? With winter’s doom impending and temperatures dropping faster than The Situation’s pants, we can’t help but cross our fingers and pray.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

Are snow days something you never grow out of? Or, in college, do they prove that miracles really can happen? Here’s how our anticipation of snow days has evolved since grammar school.

Then: A snow day meant a day off from times tables.
Now: We don’t have to finish copying someone else’s MiniTabs before Stats lab.

Then: We would make a beeline to the street and get all the neighborhood kids together for a snowball fight.
Now: We don’t have to brave arctic winds to walk to class and sit through lecture with snotsicles hanging from our frostbitten faces.

Then: Since we were already up at the crack of dawn, we could take advantage of the snow day and start building a snow man as soon as we got “the word.”
Now: We can go back to sleep for about six hours, and wake up just in time for happy hour.

Then: Snow days meant putting on snow pants and trekking to the biggest hill in town for a full day of sledding.
Now: Snow days mean putting on our beer coat and trekking to the bar for a full day of boozing.

(Note: I love how college students use a blizzard as an excuse to go to the bar, yet even when school isn’t canceled, we deem it too treacherous to walk to class.)

Then: For some unfortunate children, snow days meant driveway-shoveling duty before the parents got home.
Now: After the storm passes, we have to shovel our cars out from behind the snow banks the university plows have inevitably created throughout the parking lot.

Then: We could spend a whole extra day working on our vocabulary exercises!
Now: We could start that research paper that was due three days ago… but who are we kidding? Those episodes of Law and Order SVU aren’t going to watch themselves!

Then: We had an excuse to drink hot chocolate for breakfast.
Now: We have an excuse to drink a thirty-pack for breakfast.

I think it’s clear that snow days are one of mankind’s greatest inventions. Honestly, snow delays and cancellations are one of the top reasons to attend a university in a colder climate. I feel bad for those of you who are earning degrees in Hawaii, Florida, California, or any other season-less state. You will never experience the joys of the world’s most beautiful Get-Out-of-Jail-Free card: the beloved snow day!

Want mas? Don’t worry, there are plenty more faves where this came from.]