Squidblog

Members of the Squidoo team have come across several good examples of book-related lenses today, so we thought it’d be appropriate to highlight some of the better book lenses. Interestingly enough, they each represent different approaches to making a lens about a book.

Personal Brilliance is a good example of a lens by the author of a book. Jim Canterruci, who wrote a book by the same title, links to his blog, outlines some of the major ideas in the book, and offers a wide array of tools related to the book and his work. You can buy the book, take a self-assessment test, watch a video, and even hire Jim for a speaking engagement. If you’ve written or published a book, consider making an author- or title-specific lens to offer multiple ways to approach the text.

Pride and Prejudice, then, is a reader’s lens. Teresa Fitzwilliam loves this early-19th century novel by Jane Austen, and she’s built a lens to share her appreciation for the work — and get you more interested and involved in the book yourself. Teresa combines text list, RSS, and link list modules to address all things Austen — including the multiple film adaptations of the novel. I just ordered a copy to read myself!

And Russell Smith’s C.S. Lewis lens is another reader’s lens — but one focusing on an author instead of a particular book. Russell combines pointers to articles about the man and his work with plenty of retail links. I’d like to see more content-oriented modules, but this lens is a shoe in to link to in my lens about Lewis’s book The Magician’s Nephew.

Some other book-related lens ideas: A book club lens, a publishing company lens, a book review lens, a lens in which a writer plans out a book, a lens about writing, a lens about self-publishing… The possibilities are extensive!