Goodreads.com
Like most things ‘online social’, I found out about this via email invitation. This sneaky invitational spam, propagated by well meaning friends and email contacts, is usually the first thing to be deleted; yet the avid reader in me just couldn’t ignore this. (That’s how they getcha!)
At first glance I though ‘oh no not another social obligation site’, but with not much digging it became apparent that Goodreads is indeed about books and not just a clever front for social networking. Oh sure people review books and everyone gets their two cents, people friend each other and even authors get a chance to promote their own books, but in the end the books stand for themselves.
And of course there is timing. Back in April ’08, when I joined, I had temporarily run out of good books to read and was thus rereading a bunch of my old favorites. At the time I had tossed around the idea of keeping track of the books I was reading so that I could weed out my collection of books a bit.
Into my moment of weakness came Goodreads, the perfect book tracking website. So far I have used it for just that purpose, keeping track of the books I have read since joining, rating them and giving minor reviews.
Its incredibly useful, I need never run out of new reading suggestions again. Besides, I enjoy seeing what other people have to say about books.
Friend me if you are on Goodreads.com
Mini Rating
Excellent for my personal use. I wish some of the organizational stuff worked a bit better. Nice thing is that the site would be enjoyable even if I were the only one using it. =D
