Tonight at 7 pm Central/8 pm Eastern, there is a free workshop/training to help people learn how to make book résumés for highly targeted books. These would then go on the Unite Against Book Bans website.

Quote from the UABB website on what a Book Resume is:

Book Résumés help teachers, librarians, parents, and community members defend books from censorship. They detail each title’s significance and educational value and are easy to share with administrators, book review committees, elected officials, and board members.

Their goal is to create a process for sourcing these résumés from the community because the ALA cannot keep up with demand (and is drowning with budget cuts).

The registration link for the training is here:
https://givebutter.com/R0SVw9

I'm looking for some recommendations. I'm not a voracious reader, so just about anything you can recommend will be new to me.

I'm not sure how to describe the genre I'm after, which is really why I'm here. I just got done binging Petscop on YouTube; the surreal and Lynchian story telling coupled with the dark subject matter really sucked me in. I'm also somewhat enthralled by some of the higher quality Backrooms content.

I'm interested in short stories or novels.

Edit: sorry for not tagging. I completely forgot!

So I have a have maybe a few hundred books at home and I think it's time I put together a collection of what I have. I'd love a database of author / title / publication year / physical location that I could search through ideally.

Is there software that can help with this? I had a brief look at LibraryThing, but I think it costs money for the quantity of books I'm looking at. I briefly toyed with the concept of making my own app that could scan an ISBN to speed up the process (since most will have ISBNs). I wonder what the people of Tildes suggest? Has anyone here done something similar?

So I know we have the biweekly "what are you reading" thread, but sometimes a book will stick with you for a while beyond reading it. I'm curious what those sticky books might be for those who would like to share. Feel free to include an honorable mention if you wish!

For example, I finished reading The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones pretty recently, and I have a feeling it's going to stick with me for a while. It has a particularly unique flavor of an often-seen paranormal/mythological creature that I appreciated, and the characters developed so much over time that I find myself thinking about it. This book wasn't at all like what I normally read (though I am trying to branch out) and I benefitted from the reading experience more than I expected to. The blurb I got for the book also tells you nothing about the story - it's basically just the hook - and I think that technique worked very well. Interestingly, most of the books I find myself thinking about for a while after I read them are horror books, but I'm not usually thinking about them for their scarier elements.

Honorable mention - Sand by Hugh Howey. I read this a year ago and often find myself recommending it to people who enjoy sci fi. I found the technology (decrepit though it is shown to be) super interesting.

Other books that are feeling memorable for me right now are part of series I'm actively working toward finishing, so I'm not really counting those, as they're called up by their universes every time I dive back in.

In light of the stated desire of group members to also read books reflecting minority or disadvantaged perspectives, here is a second book nominations thread.

I'm drawing the boundaries of the category as broadly as I can and feel free to include a book (within the length limit of 600 pages) that you think fits within these parameters. Also, diverse or minority or disadvantaged can apply to either or both of author or main character. Of the books of this type we have read so far, Born a Crime and Kindred were the most popular.

Here are some examples of what we might choose. This is not meant to be a set of hard boundaries, just a descriptive exploration.

Books that qualify include but are not limited to: being from a poor or formerly colonized country, being an immigrant or refugee, being a political/ethnic minority such as basque, tibetan, romani or catalan or kurdish, being indigenous, being poor or ethnic minority in a dominant country, being a sexual/gender minority, being disabled etc.

Edit - Nominations are closed

This is the fourth nominations thread for Tildes book club.

If you think you might be interested to read with us, please name between one and five books you find intriguing and think others might enjoy. We will later have a voting thread so that each nomination gets an equal shot to win votes with no early nomination advantage. Our next book in August is Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut, Followed by Ted Chiang Stories of your life and Others in September.

Please feel free to nominate both fiction and nonfiction. Books should be 600 pages or shorter. The first books in series are fair game for nominations if they tell a complete story.

This is the sixteenth of an ongoing series of book discussions here on Tildes. We are discussing The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride. Our next book will be Cats Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut at the end of August.

I don't have a particular format in mind for this discussion, but I will post some prompts and questions as comments to get things started. You're not obligated to respond to them or vote on them though. So feel free to make your own top-level comment for whatever you wish to discuss, questions you have of others, or even just to post a review of the book you have written yourself.

For latecomers, don't worry if you didn't read the book in time for this Discussion topic. You can always join in once you finish it. Tildes Activity sort, and "Collapse old comments" feature should keep the topic going for as long as people are still replying.

And for anyone uninterested in this topic please use the Ignore Topic feature on this so it doesn't keep popping up in your Activity sort, since it's likely to keep doing that while I set this discussion up, and once people start joining in.

This is the second of an ongoing series of book discussions here on Tildes. We are discussing Piranesi.
Our next book will be Ursula le Guin the Dispossessed, around the 16th or 17th of May.

I don't have a particular format in mind for this discussion, but I will post some prompts and questions as comments to get things started. You're not obligated to respond to them or vote on them though. So feel free to make your own top-level comment for whatever you wish to discuss, questions you have of others, or even just to post a review of the book you have written yourself.

For latecomers, don't worry if you didn't read the book in time for this Discussion topic. You can always join in once you finish it. Tildes Activity sort, and "Collapse old comments" feature should keep the topic going for as long as people are still replying.
And for anyone uninterested in this topic please use the Ignore Topic feature on this so it doesn't keep popping up in your Activity sort, since it's likely to keep doing that while I set this discussion up, and once people start joining in.

What are you reading currently? Fiction or non-fiction or poetry, any genre, any language! Tell us what you're reading, and talk about it a bit.

This is the twelfth of an ongoing series of book discussions here on Tildes. We are discussing Hyperion by Dan Simmons. Our next book will be Elder Race by Adrian Tchaikovsky at the end of April.

I don't have a particular format in mind for this discussion, but I will post some prompts and questions as comments to get things started. You're not obligated to respond to them or vote on them though. So feel free to make your own top-level comment for whatever you wish to discuss, questions you have of others, or even just to post a review of the book you have written yourself. Also, this month will be slightly different. I have been exceptionally busy and didn't finish the book this time. I am hoping that you all who did read it will come up with interesting questions in addition to your comments/ reviews.

For latecomers, don't worry if you didn't read the book in time for this Discussion topic. You can always join in once you finish it. Tildes Activity sort, and "Collapse old comments" feature should keep the topic going for as long as people are still replying.
And for anyone uninterested in this topic please use the Ignore Topic feature on this so it doesn't keep popping up in your Activity sort, since it's likely to keep doing that while I set this discussion up, and once people start joining in.

This is the fifteenth of an ongoing series of book discussions here on Tildes. We are discussing A House with Good Bones by T Kingfisher. Our next book will be the Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride at the end of July.

I don't have a particular format in mind for this discussion, but I will post some prompts and questions as comments to get things started. You're not obligated to respond to them or vote on them though. So feel free to make your own top-level comment for whatever you wish to discuss, questions you have of others, or even just to post a review of the book you have written yourself.

For latecomers, don't worry if you didn't read the book in time for this Discussion topic. You can always join in once you finish it. Tildes Activity sort, and "Collapse old comments" feature should keep the topic going for as long as people are still replying.
And for anyone uninterested in this topic please use the Ignore Topic feature on this so it doesn't keep popping up in your Activity sort, since it's likely to keep doing that while I set this discussion up, and once people start joining in.

This is the fourteenth of an ongoing series of book discussions here on Tildes. We are discussing A People's Future of the United States. Our next book will be A House with Good Bones by Kingfisher at the end of June

This was our first collection of short stories. Please feel free to discuss any story you read regardless of whether you finished the collection.

I don't have a particular format in mind for this discussion, but I will post some prompts and questions as comments to get things started. You're not obligated to respond to them or vote on them though. So feel free to make your own top-level comment for whatever you wish to discuss, questions you have of others, or even just to post a review of the book you have written yourself.

For latecomers, don't worry if you didn't read the book in time for this Discussion topic. You can always join in once you finish it. Tildes Activity sort, and "Collapse old comments" feature should keep the topic going for as long as people are still replying.
And for anyone uninterested in this topic please use the Ignore Topic feature on this so it doesn't keep popping up in your Activity sort, since it's likely to keep doing that while I set this discussion up, and once people start joining in.

Next week we will be discussing the City We Became. Our next book discussion after that will be at the end of January.

I've organized this schedule so that longer books are followed by shorter ones. I look forward to reading with you.

Last week in January : Kim Stanley Robinson Ministry for the Future,

Last week in February: Trevor Noah Born a Crime,

Last week in March: Dan Simmons Hyperion,

Last week in April: Adrian Tchaikovsky Elder Race,

Last week in May: Victor LaValle a People's Future of the United States,

Last week in June: T Kingfisher A House with Good Bones,

Last week in July: James McBride the Heaven and Earth grocery Store,

Last week in August: Cats Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

Last week in September: Ted Chiang Stories of Your Life and Others

I've never really been one to look into publishers too much, with the extent of my interaction being that if I noticed they published some books I enjoyed I may go and look up what other authors they've published to see if I'd also enjoy their books.

Are there any publishers you actively follow or subscribe to any newsletters for, or engage with in any way?

I thought it might be fun seeing how my fellow Tilders interact with publishers.

This is the thirteenth of an ongoing series of book discussions here on Tildes. We are discussing Elder Race by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Our next book will be A People's Future of the United States by Victor LaValle, at the end of May..

I don't have a particular format in mind for this discussion, but I will post some prompts and questions as comments to get things started. You're not obligated to respond to them or vote on them though. So feel free to make your own top-level comment for whatever you wish to discuss, questions you have of others, or even just to post a review of the book you have written yourself.

For latecomers, don't worry if you didn't read the book in time for this Discussion topic. You can always join in once you finish it. Tildes Activity sort, and "Collapse old comments" feature should keep the topic going for as long as people are still replying.
And for anyone uninterested in this topic please use the Ignore Topic feature on this so it doesn't keep popping up in your Activity sort, since it's likely to keep doing that while I set this discussion up, and once people start joining in.

I usually generate ebooks in two ways. One is to export directly from Emacs Org-Mode with ox-epub. That doesn't give me a lot of control and export options are a bit of a crapshoot. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. The other is to export from Org-Mode to either odt or docx and use Libreoffice Writer to export to EPUB. I will then open the ebook on Calibre to fix the metadata, the table of contents., and generate a cover.

That works fine for my personal use, but in the near future I may need to generate an ebook that looks proper and professional. I don't even know what "proper and professional" really means for an ebook, but I assume there must be tools and practices that are universally recomended that I am not following.

Hence the question: are there "pro" tools for authoring ebooks? Are there any rules, standards, workflows, or guidelines I should be following? If those exist, where can I find tutorials and documentation on how to generate the best books?

EDIT: I use Windows and Linux.

Thanks!