Introducing Mombian Books

I’m very excited to announce the beta launch of Mombian Books, a place for people in LGBT families to share book ideas. I’ve found that although there are lots of LGBT-family booklists around, they tend to repeat many of the same books (Heather Has Two Mommies, Daddy’s Roommate, etc.), with maybe a few unique ones per list. It means scrounging around for ideas, and hoping the individuals who maintain the lists remember to update them. There’s also no easy way to find books both about LGBT families and simply appropriate for them. (E.g., Heather Has Two Mommies is about an LGBT family;Green Eggs and Ham isn’t, but contains nothing that would be objectionable.)

Mombian Books, however, is a “social booklist” site, intended to harness the collective book recommendations of LGBT families. After signing up, you maintain your own list of books, which you can rate, add comments to, and tag with keywords. You can also see all the books, ratings, comments, and tags that other users have entered, and search by tag, author, or keyword. You can even see which other users are currently reading books you like or want to read. This means that as more people participate, Mombian Books will become more and more useful.

Books are automatically linked to Amazon, so you can easily buy ones that interest you. There are also links that make it easy to e-mail book ideas to other people.

I’d like to keep the focus on kids’ books and books for and about LGBT parents, but will not be overly pedantic about this. Books on relevant politics or useful household topics (gardening, cooking, etc.) would also be fine. Anything that strays too far afield (say, a book about Web development), I reserve the right to remove (though I’m always willing to discuss it).

I’m running Mombian Books through a Web-application service called Ning. This means some functionality is limited by what Ning offers—but I thought it was robust enough to give it a try. You’ll have to create a username and password and agree to the Ning User Agreement.

Start by visiting Mombian Books and clicking “Sign Up” in the upper right. Please then read the few additional notes I’ve put on the front page, and start searching and sharing. (I’ve added a handful of my own recommendations to get things going, but hope others will contribute soon.)

I’m calling this a “beta test,” which means an introductory period while we see how things go and I work the kinks out of the system. Leave a comment and let me know what you think.