ShelfJoy Review: A Cool App for Your Bookish Lists

I was contacted a while back to do a review of this fairly new bookish app:

ShelfJoy

I eagerly jumped at the chance, but was delayed in publishing this post due to personal reasons.

The first time I heard of ShelfJoy was back in February when Vicky at Books and Strips posted a review of it. Apart from Goodreads, I don’t use social media apps to organize my books. I use Goodreads to keep track of what I’ve read and books I want to purchase and use a computer app that I pay for to keep track of books I own. (It’s called Book Collectorz and it’s very effective.) I was satisfied with just those two but when I took a peek at ShelfJoy, I immediately took a liking to it for the following reasons:

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Two Illustrated Books: “The River” and “Harry Potter & the Sorcerer’s Stone”

It’s been a while since I’ve read an illustrated book, I realized on a recent visit to the library. I decided to rectify that by picking up two books that were on display, one about a river and another, a familiar story, about the boy who lived. Both were good reads and quite an experience, though one wasn’t as I expected it to be. However in both, I found that I paid more attention to the artwork rather than the story.

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The River by Alessandro Sanna (illus.), trans. by Michael Reynolds

Quick summary:

The River is an illustrated book by Italian painter and illustrator Alessandro Sanna about a town situated by a river. The story is told almost entirely without words, and the book is separated into four parts, one for each season, that all begin with a short paragraph about how the season affects the river or the town and what is included in that section (I realized this last part after completing the book).

My thoughts and the Art style:

The River is a sweet story. To tell the story of the town and the river, Sanna has us focus on a character, a man, to see how the seasons and the river affect his life.