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If your goal is to read more books this year, it might help to create a reading list.

To help you keep track of all of the books that you want to read and to have a central repository to add new books to the list, we’ve made a list of apps that can help you build your reading.

3 Apps for Creating Reading Lists

1. Goodreads: “Use our barcode scanner the next time you are in a bookstore. Add the book in your hands to your “to-read” shelf and browse reviews before buying.”

2. Reading List: “Reading List is a quick, useful app that will help you track your books and get back to reading.”

3. To Read: “A simple, lightweight list to keep track of the books you want to read.”

The New York Times launched its website 20 years ago today.

To celebrate, the multimedia publication has put together a timeline of its digital history. From its early days as a portal on American Online to the debut podcasts of The New York Times Book Review, you can browse the Times’ digital properties through the last two decades at this link.

The collection allows you to zoom in on different years and browse through the publication’s homepages and listen to audio recordings. You can also read redesign news stories from across the two decades and reminisce about what the Times’ 1990s homepage looked like.

Reddit has published a collection of its Ask Me Anything sessions.

Ask Me Anything (A collection of Reddit’s best from r/IAmA Volume 1), is a 400-page collection featuring excerpts from many of the site’s digital interviews with prominent people. The book contains digital question and answer sessions that ran on the site from the likes of Barack Obama, Madonna, Bill Gates and Buzz Aldrin.

While the majority of readers gave the book a good Amazon review, the $35 tome has gotten some backlash from user reviews, many of whom complained about the price and the formatting.

Children’s book publisher Scholastic is hoping to get kids excited about the presidential election and has launched a new site dedicated to the event.

The 2016 Presidential Election was created by the editors of Scholastic News magazines. The site includes candidate cards with factsheets on the varying candidates, as well as an election tracker map that will be updated with primary and caucus results. The site will also feature original campaign trail reporting from kids in the Scholastic News Kids Press Corps.

The publisher will add polls to the site where kids can participate in the Scholastic Student Vote mock-election, as the election gets closer.

Have you ever imagined E. H. Shepard, the illustrator behind A. A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh series, drawing his own version of Star Wars? James Hance, an artist, has tackled this challenge.

According to Bored Panda, “Hance’s illustrations reimagine Chewbacca as Pooh Bear and Eeyore as an Imperial Walker.” Some of the pieces can be found for sale at Hance’s Etsy shop.

In addition to artwork, Hance has actually written and produced an audiobook entitled Wookie the Chew: The House at Chew Corner. Click here to download a free digital copy.

Many years ago, Alan Rickman chatted with J.K. Rowling to learn more about Severus Snape, a character he would play for a decade in the Harry Potter film franchise. In a goodbye letter that Rickman wrote to honor the conclusion of the movie series (published in Empire magazine back in 2011), his conversation with Rowling contained “one small clue, persuaded me that there was more to Snape than an unchanging costume.”

In his lifetime, Rickman never divulged the details about that clue. Recently, in light of the actor’s passing, one Twitter user asked Rowling what exactly she told him that convinced him to become the Hogwarts Potions Master. According to Vanity Fair, the Harry Potter series author shared that she told him “what lies behind the word ‘always.'”

People Magazine reports that like so many within the Harry Potter community, Rowling has been mourning Rickman. She posted a message on Twitter to express her devastation and sadness that “we have all lost a great talent.” Below, we’ve collected several relevant tweets in a Storify post embedded below—what do you think? (via International Business Times)

Thirty-three libraries in the U.S. circulated at least one million e-books each in 2015, according to new metrics released by the digital book distribution company OverDrive.

The research revealed that e-book library checkouts grew in 2015, as compare to 2014. According to the report, public library readers borrowed more than 169 million digital assets, which includes e-books, audiobooks, digital periodicals and video streaming. This number was up 24 percent over 2014. Digital audiobook downloads saw the greatest spike with a 36 percent increase over the prior year.

Toronto Public Library circulated more than 2 million e-books during the year, up 31 percent year-over-year. Library System in Washington State and the New York Public Library each circulated more than 2 million e-books during the year.

Neil Gaiman posted a fan fiction story about David Bowie on his website.

Gaiman shared the piece shortly after the passing of the beloved rock star. According to his Facebook announcement, he wrote it “to illustrate some beautiful Yoshitaka Amano images of Bowie and Iman.”

The short story, entitled The Return of The Thin White Duke, can also be found in Gaiman’s short fiction collection, Trigger Warning. Click on this link to read the full piece. Follow this link to hear the author read a portion of the story.

The New York Public Library is making high resolution images from its digital collection available for free download from its site for the first time.

NYPL’s Digital Collections website has access to more than 180,000 public domain photographs, manuscripts, scrolls, personal letters and maps. In addition, to the image update, the organization is improving its metadata to make it easier for researchers to find these digital assets.

The library is hoping that people will use this content to create their own and has also launched a new Remix Residency program. Check it out:

Administered by the Library’s digitization and innovation team, NYPL Labs, the residency is intended for artists, information designers, software developers, data scientists, journalists, digital researchers, and others to make transformative and creative uses of digital collections and data,and the public domain assets in particular. Two projects will be selected, receiving financial and consultative support from Library curators and technologists.

A new feature piece has been published on Pottermore called “The Sad History of Merope Gaunt.” This minor character from J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series has become well-known as the mother of the antagonist, Tom Riddle (a.k.a. Lord Voldemort).

SPOILER ALERT: If you don’t want to know more, you should stop reading now!

Here’s an excerpt from the post: “It might be argued that Voldemort grew up devoid of love because his mother died for want of it, and that his father’s love was stolen rather than earned. Perhaps if he’d had any understanding of the difference between genuine love and the kind that you compel, Voldemort might have had a better grasp of its power.”

In the past, Rowling has written essays on singing sorceress Celestina Warbeck, the Dursleys, and the symbolism behind Albus Dumbledore and Rubeus Hagrid’s names. Which character from the Harry Potter universe would you like to learn more about?

Filmkollektiv Frankfurt hopes to raise $4,403 on Kickstarter for the first book on pioneering Nigerian filmmaker Ola Balogun.

The book, Magic of Nigeria – On the Cinema of Ola Balogun, will explore the filmic work of the Nigerian film director whose 10 films made between 1972 and 1982 were very influential in Nigerian filmmaking. Nollywood is one of the largest film industries in the world. According to Fortune, Nigeria’s film business rakes in $3 billion a year. The industry produces more movies by volume than Hollywood and is second only to India’s Bollywood.

If funded, the publication will feature a biographical essay written by Balogun’s wife and long-time collaborator Françoise Balogun, as well as essays analyzing Balogun’s contributions to African cinema by Olaf Möller, Jonathan Haynes and Nikolaus Perneczky. In addition, the book will include a photo gallery with many previously unpublished images, as well as a detailed filmography.

Shelfie, the app that let users snap a picture of their print books to download an e-book edition, is now offering audiobooks.

The company recently partnered with audiobook distributor Findaway, to offer audiobook bundles to readers. Participating publishers include: Blackstone Audio, Gildan Media, Hachette Audio, HarperAudio, Naxos Audiobooks and Scholastic Audio. The deal brings titles from authors including: Joe Hill, Harper Lee, Chris Kyle, Michael Connelly, James Patterson, Suzanne Collins, Haruki Murakami, Nicholas Sparks and David Baldacci.

The reader must take a photo of their print book with their name written on their book’s copyright page to access audiobook (and e-book) editions of participating titles.

Artist Chris Riddell has created a Christmas gift for the world. He took it upon himself to draw some illustrations for a Neil Gaiman short story called “Nicholas Was…”

Follow this link to see a digital album with all 11 of Riddell’s artistic pieces. Gaiman describes the piece as a “heartwarming Christmas story” in a Facebook post. Readers will find this piece within the 1998 anthology, Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fictions and Illusions.

In the past, Riddell has illustrated the U.K. editions of Gaiman’s children’s books. He has also created illustrations for one of Gaiman’s poems, “Locks,” and his “artist’s creed.” Riddell’s daughter, Katy, also followed in her father’s footsteps by producing illustrations for a Gaiman short story called “Babycakes.”

For some, the day before Christmas will be devoted to last minute gift shopping. If you still need to find a present for the Harry Potter fan in your life, the Pottermore team has created “a visual guide to buying tickets for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.”

We’ve embedded the full infographic below for you to explore further—what do you think? The opening date for this London-based theatrical show has been set for July 2016.

Pixite, a photo app development company, has created an adult coloring book-style app called Pigment. For the past few years, adult coloring books have exploded in popularity.

Although this app is free to download, those who wish to access all the available coloring books must pay a $5.00 monthly subscription fee. At this point in time, this app has only been made accessible to iOS device users.

Here’s more from Fast Company: “You can color free-form with your finger, or you can have the app outline shapes like a stencil so you can’t go over the line. You can use the popular Apple Pencil accessory for iPads, but you don’t have to…This aspect of having something mindless to occupy your hands while you do something else can help your focus and concentration. Similar to doodling, coloring may block the brain’s self-generated noise that can often send daydreamers into an anxious spin.” (via mental floss)

If you have some last minute shopping to do and don’t feel like hitting the stores, consider sending an e-book to the reader on your list.

If your loved one has a Kindle or likes to read in the Kindle app, Amazon makes it easy to send books digitally with the “Give as a Gift” button. You just have to click the button and share the recipient’s email address along with the delivery date in order to send the gift. You can also send a personal note along with the Kindle book.

If your loved one has a Nook or prefers to read in Barnes and Noble’s digital app, they can do a similar thing. Just click the “Buy as gift” button and register for an account to send the e-book. 

If your loved one has an iPad and prefers to read on the iBooks app, then you can send them a gift directly from within an iOS device. To purchase the e-book, you can click on the share button and choose the gift option. Then you have to sign into your iTunes account, select the recipient and send date. You can also add a personal note.

Google Play doesn’t offer the option to send specific e-books as gifts, but you can send a digital gift card and a note with a book recommendation to your loved one.

GitHub’s challenge to computer programmers to create 50,000-word novels via computer code led to 188 projects last month.

This was the site’s third annual NaNoGenMo competition, which stemmed from a 2013 tweet. Inspired by the National Novel Writing Month, the computer coding contest also ran in November.

“The “novel” is defined however you want. It could be 50,000 repetitions of the word “meow”. It could literally grab a random novel from Project Gutenberg. It doesn’t matter, as long as it’s 50k+ words,” explained Darius Kazemi, the founder of the contest.

The New Stack has more about this year’s entries:

“I took a picture of the cover of “The Sun Also Rises,” converted it to a PNG and then decoded the PNG and for each pixel got the nearest named color,” the author wrote on his novel’s official GitHub issue page. “It’s 800 chapters long and 803,218 words (according to wc). There’s also an audiobook version that’s 173 hours and like 2.5 gigs.” You can hear a delightful sample on the novel’s official web page.

Nine percent of funded creative projects on Kickstarter fail to deliver the rewards, according to a new study from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

In March, Kickstarter invited Professor Ethan Mollick to create an independent study on the subject and he interviewed 500,000 backers to explore “project outcomes and backer sentiment.” The research revealed the following:

• 8 percent of dollars pledged went to failed projects

• 7 percent of backers failed to receive their chosen reward

• 65 percent of backers agreed or strongly agreed with the statement that “the reward was delivered on time”

The Media Diversified nonprofit has launched an indiegogo campaign for the Bare Lit Festival. They aim to raise £7,000.00 (roughly $10441.55 USD).

The intent behind this U.K.-based event is to exclusively showcase works by writers of color. The festival will take place from Feb. 26, 2016 to Feb. 28, 2016. We’ve embedded a video about the project above.

Here’s more from the campaign page: “Last year, the U.K.’s three largest literary festivals featured over 2000 authors. Of those 2000+ authors, only 4% were from Black Caribbean, Black African, South Asian or East Asian backgrounds. We’re aiming to change that.”

Millennials spend 13 billion minutes a month interacting on digital writing and reading community Wattpad, according to the site.

The site revealed its year end statistics today. During 2015, the site recorded more than 150,000 original story uploads on Wattpad tagged ‘Kardashian’.

This year the site also launched its annual awards The Wattys internationally for the first time. The site received more than 75,000 entries, which according to Wattpad makes it the world’s largest online writing contest. Kim Kardashian: Trapped in Her Own Game a fan fiction, based on a video game and on Kardashian’s life earned a Wattys Award.

Follow this link for more fun facts from the year.

Inspired by books, city landscapes and water color paintings, Chronicle Books has created a lovely holiday video card. We’ve embedded the video above for your enjoyment.

Adzuna.co.uk has created an infographic called, “Jobs From Fiction that Are More Exciting Then Yours.”

The graphic features outlandish professions from movies, books, comic books, myths and video games from raptor wrangler to travel agent at the department of death.

We’ve got the entire infographic for you after the jump.

Scholastic has launched a new biweekly podcast on children’s books and literacy. Suzanne McCabe, an editor-at-large, has signed on to serve as the host. The first episode of “Scholastic Reads” contains a discussion on “The Magic of Harry Potter.”

Here’s more from the press release: “What sets the Harry Potter series apart from other popular children’s series?…Cheryl Klein talks about her work as continuity editor on the series and shares harrowing stories about keeping the final manuscripts secret. Literacy expert Pam Allyn, Founding Director of LitWorld, weighs in on how Hogwarts and the lessons Harry Potter teaches us can be valuable for educators.”

The second episode focuses on holiday book buying. The third episode will present advice and tips on how to mold children into “super readers.” The fourth episode will feature predictions on the trends of 2016 from children’s literature experts David Allender and Preeti Chhibber. Click here to listen to the premiere episode.

The Harry Potter e-books hit the Kindle store last week with new cover designs.

Olly Moss, who has designed movie posters, video game packaging and an Oscars poster, created the new look. He tweeted the news last week.

I made new covers for Harry Potter. My eleven-year-old self is losing his mind right now. pic.twitter.com/VnZNZ7xZKQ

— Olly Moss (@ollymoss) December 11, 2015

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