I’m a huge fan of books – which probably helps to explain how I ended up on my career path. I’m glad to see that in this day and age books still are alive and well. We can even harness the power of the internet to decide what books we want to read and discover other books. There’s a site I’ve been a member of for sometime that lets you catalogue your books – Goodreads (http://www.goodreads.com) – but I’ve never really played around with it much. Apparently, they’ve added some new features in the last year, so I decided to explore.
First things first, I noticed that Goodreads now has challenges. I remember a while ago I saw a lot of book blogs running custom challenges, but it seemed so cumbersome and hard to keep up. Goodreads is actually running a Jane Eyre challenge. To complete the challenge, you read the book and watch the movie. You can also do other things like participate in a discussion, pick your favorite quotes, and interact with other people reading the book and see how far along they are. Plus, if you do all these things, you have the chance to win some pretty interesting prizes, like a Kindle. All of the blog-run challenges I had seen before didn’t really have any prizes they could give away (since they were run by individuals), so this makes it more interesting. Also, I see that they are cleverly tying in companies like Fandango to this. Plus, it’s general promotion for the movie. All in all, this is a clever way to promote reading and make everyone happy.
Another new thing I’ve noticed is that Goodreads allows you to select ereaders. You can tell it which devices you own and you can also learn more about the device, including what other people have said and what formats it supports. If you own a device you can rate it and write a review for it. I can also see which of my friends – if any – own the device as well. I’m glad to see that Goodreads is embracing ereaders, because I do think they will become even more popular as the years go on. Speaking of ebooks, there is also a section on Goodreads where I can view popular ebooks and even download them for free. This is a good way to find content for reading, although I really don’t need to as I have plenty of books on my backlog already.
Another new feature Goodreads has is “book talks”. I can see topic postings for the books that I have added to my library and even participate in some discussions, if I’m feeling up to it. I have the book “Twilight” in my library, and there seem to be quite a lot of discussions about that. Goodreads also has groups, which aren’t necessarily based on one particular book, but many books. For instance, I belong to a “Florida Beach Bums” group which focuses on good books to read for the beach (i.e. light, fluffy, not too complex). I can see the discussions that are currently going on in this group, and which books the group is reading (if any).
Overall, I think Goodreads is definitely a solid website that compliments but does not replace the act of reading. I’m glad to see them embracing social technology and consistently adding new features. I’ll definitely keep a better eye on the site to see where else it goes. I also think this is great for librarians because it gives them a place to keep current on books, find more books to recommend based on what they already know, and discuss with others about books as well. Plus, with the addition of the ereaders and ebooks, librarians have a resource to go to to learn more about these technologies, if they wish.
I’d also like to add that while poking around for reading sites, I found a community book club on livejournal that picks a book and has weekly discussions over a 6-week period. I think I might actually follow this and participate to see how it goes. I like the idea of reading a book a chunk at a time instead of all at once.
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