Goodreads

I keep mentioning the Goodreads site in my posts so I thought I'd discuss this fabulous site.

Probably most of my readers are intimately familiar with Goodreads, but just in case anyone is not, I will describe it. Goodreads is a place where you can organize your reading. You can log the books you want to read, the books you have read, and what you thought of the books. That's the very basic use for your Goodreads account, but there is much more.

If you would like to friend me on Goodreads, you can view my books and see what I rated them. Goodreads has a 5-star rating system. I think everyone who uses it wishes they were able to give 1/2 stars. With only 5 stars, there is a lot of difference between a 4 star book and a 5 star. How do you rate a four and a half star book? This is why I use a 10-bookmark system here.

One of my favorite things about Goodreads is the social aspect available by joining groups. My favorite is the Pick a Shelf Group.

The main activity on this shelf is to read books on a shelf chosen by a member. Usually, some of the books on any given shelf don't actually match the title of the shelf. For example, the Harry Potter books show up on practically every shelf. For example, this month is the Alternative History shelf, but the Harry Potter books are all there. Whatever. It works for me.

There are other games and challenges happening in this group. I, personally am involved in the LOST challenge, in which you read the books that have been on your to-be-read shelf the longest. I'm halfway through my list for this year, so that's pretty good. Also, I'm doing the Moving Mountains. In this game, you pick a number and go through your to-be-read list and choose every fourth book or whatever number you chose. This way you can get books off your list that are representative of the whole list. There are so many more games on just this one group, you should just go check them all out.

Not everyone is interested in regulating their reading the way I do. Actually, I don't really like having a "list" I have to read from, but it does give me some direction to get those books read.

Another option is to find ways to add books to your list. Goodreads has a Recommendations button which recommends book to you based on books you've already put on your shelf. I have found lots of interesting books using this feature.

One more fun thing I'll mention is the ability to compare your books to a friend's. The program will tell you how many books you have in common and what each of you rated each of the books. That's interesting if you are into statistics.

This was just a drop in the bucket of fun things to do on the Goodreads site. I recommend playing around and seeing what you can find. Enjoy!