Resources

Quaker Reviews

An Online Resource of Reviews of Pendle Hill Pamphlets

QuakerReviews (all one word, no space) is an online site of short reviews of (most of) the Pendle Hill Pamphlets They address subjects of interest to Friends, such as Quaker theology, Quaker process, Quaker history, spiritual disciplines, spiritual development, mysticism, vocal ministry, the testimonies, introduction to Quakerism, art and poetry, and more. As well, many inspiring ones tell of a Friend’s own spiritual journey. There are many wonderful pamphlets, and many superb ones; reading through them provides an excellent Quaker education. QuakerReviews currently includes reviews of about three quarters of all the pamphlets, over 400, and most of the pamphlets of recent years; more are being added. Published regularly since 1934 into the present by Pendle Hill Publications, there are over 400 pamphlets, all available from the Pendle Hill bookstore.

The QuakerReviews site provides information on each pamphlet, as well as a review and a rating: title, author, publication date, subject categories, review, and rating. The site is searchable, and provides an alphabetical list of all the authors and of all the tags (subject categories). The reader can thus find any particular author, or tag, click on it, and obtain a page with all the pamphlet entries by that author or in that subject category. Also, the pamphlet entries can be sorted by order of the ratings (all the 5 star pamphlets listed first) or by alphabetical order of the tags (all those with the tag starting with A, e.g., Aging & End of Life, first), or alphabetically by author or by title, or by publication date (which produces the list in order of the pamphlet number as well). 

The reviews are brief, describe the content, and assess the quality. The ratings range from zero to five stars, from poor quality to good to outstanding. The reviewer is Jean Rosenberg, of Middlebury Friends Meeting, in Vermont, USA.

QuakerReviews is a site on Librarything, which is a cataloging and social networking site where people and organizations can create their own site to catalog their books, contribute reviews and ratings, and share all this information. Many Quaker meetings use Librarything to catalog their libraries of books and pamphlets.

Getting to the QuakerReviews Site

To access the QuakerReviews site online, enter the following URL on your URL address line:

www.librarything.com/catalog/QuakerReviews

This takes you to the catalog pages; they contain all the entries on the Pendle Hill Pamphlets listed in order (whatever order the last user left them in; to rearrange them in another order see the instructions below). Or go to:

www.librarything.com/profile/QuakerReviews

This will bring you to the profile page for QuakerReviews; it explains a little about the reviewer, the ratings, and the site. Scroll to the bottom of this page where two URLs are given for this site, click on /catalog/QuakerReviews, and the catalog pages will open up.