Top Ten Tuesday: Favorite Non-Bookish Sites
Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted by The Broke and The Bookish, devoted to lists of all things books. This week’s theme is a little off the usual topic — Ten Websites I Love That Aren’t About Books. So here we go, in no particular order:
1. IMDb
I am a HUUUUUUUUUUUGE film geek; have been ever since I was teeny-tiny and watching old movies on TCM with my dad. My favorite part on every single title is the Trivia page, which I have to read whenever I watch something. Literally, whenever I watch anything. Random movie knowledge sticks in my head like gum in hair and forces out unimportant things like grocery lists, bill due dates, family birthdays… You ever need a movie nerd for your pub trivia team, I’m your girl. (Go ahead, try to stump me.)
2. Buzzfeed
My favorite timesuck. Not always the best lists I’ve ever seen and someone really needs to hire an editor, but seriously, what better way to brighten a crappy, boring work day than 27 Cat Pictures That Are Never Not Funny?
3. Polyvore
Most days I dress in my standard contemporary librarian uniform — jeans, tee, cardigan. But then I spend hours looking at Polyvore, and it makes me aspire to dressing like a woman with some semblance of style. Man, do I want to have style.
Gregg’s got a terrific eye and fantastic skills with a camera and with photo manipulation. He starts with a simple photo of a house, and turns it into a beautiful, surreal image — it looks like a story just begging to be written. (What would you say about who lives here?) And not only does he create these fantastical surreal and abstract photographs, but he also sees the artistry in simply walking down a city street: interesting faces, angles, graffiti… everything can be art if you look at it the right way.
Adriene is my favorite YouTube yogi — she may talk a bit too much, but she’s all about doing what feels good and making yoga a habit. She doesn’t talk down to her viewers, and she doesn’t get way too into the “breathe into your toenails, your hair, your left pinky knuckle,” super-spiritual aspect, which I totally appreciate. But at the same time she’s very calming to watch; she never takes herself too seriously, breaks down poses into simple movements, and is totally willing to embrace her own silliness.
6. Evernote
If there is anything that makes me feel organized, Evernote is it. I’ve tried everything else; OneNote, Dropbox, Trello, etc., etc., etc. Evernote just feels clean, with categories, tags, notebooks, all sorted the way you want. You can save PDFs, text files, spreadsheets, everything. And the best thing is that you can access it ANYWHERE.
7. ThredUp
This is a new favorite. My first choice for clothes shopping is always going to be thrift stores. The gems you can find at a fraction of the price is totally worth the time and effort digging through racks stuffed to the gills… but ThredUp lets you do the thrifting without the digging. AND, when you live in a busy downtown neighborhood and there aren’t really convenient options for donating clothes, the fact that they send you a box FOR FREE is quite possibly my favorite thing about them.
8. TheSkimm
This is one of my favorite ways to get the news. They send an email every day, with top news stories (and some just interesting tidbits) written in a very accessible, conversational tone. It’s fine if you haven’t been following an ongoing story; they quickly sum up all the key points you may have missed previously and tell you what’s new.
I have a terrible problem — I WANT TO LEARN ALL THE THINGS. And with the advent of MOOCs and OpenCourseWare, I actually can! OCW is my favorite type of self-learning; it could just be a syllabus from a class, or it could be the syllabus, assignments, answer keys, video lectures, PDFs of reading materials, the whole shebang. Or anywhere in between. It’s basically like continuing college, without the worrying about grades (or student loans). A bunch of super universities offer OCW, and this site has a compilation of the best.
10. Women’s Running
I’m not an elite runner, nor am I even a competitive one right now. But the information on this website is terrific, no matter where on the running spectrum you may currently sit. I use it for warm-up and stretching routines, understanding the difference between tempo runs and easy runs, knowing what to eat and what not to eat after a run, and so forth.
