Reading social sites.

[Shay]

I'm just wondering what people think of reading social sites such as Shelfari and GoodReads? If you use them, how do you like them? If you don't use them, is there a reason why not?

I personally use Shelfari and I love it. I looked at a couple of other similar sites, but I just didn't like the interface and features nearly as much. I find it very helpful to use Shelfari to keep track of the books I've read and the books I'm planning to read.

It has a wealth of various groups you can join to find people who like similar books as you and you can even create your own groups if you like. I've found the groups to be very helpful for getting book recommendations and for finding books from new authors that self publish that I might not hear about otherwise.

I also really like the features it has where you can set reading goals for yourself and track them and also view your reading statistics.

Considering how much I'm loving this site, I'm really surprised that none of my friends and family who are avid readers seem to be interested in joining. None of them really gave a reason why, but I guess they just aren't interested in what sites like Shelfari have to offer. One of my sisters did say though that if she was interested in tracking her reading, that she'd just do it in an excel document. I suppose there's nothing wrong with doing it in excel, but I prefer a more graphical interface and it looks really nice to be able to see all of my books on a virtual bookshelf especially since I use mostly ebooks now.

[Jorm]

I'd never heard of this before now. Just took a quick look at Shelfari and I can see it being a useful place to go for ideas on good books to read and maybe, like you say, setting goals and keeping track of them in an effort to read more, but as a social thing it doesn't interest me. To some extent it's that I prefer reading to be a more solitary pursuit so I don't really have any interest in involving other people in my reading, but more than that I just don't like virtual discussion very much. The SF community is one of only two internet communities I've remained active in for any length of time and it's probably only because the internet is the only place I can talk about the fetish with other people who have it. So even when the mood strikes me to talk about books with people, the internet definitely isn't the place I'd choose to do it.

I guess ultimately I don't that sort of thing being worth my time if it's not integrated with actually accessing the books. If you could download ebooks through there I might be more interested, but otherwise it just seems like a bother.

[Shay]

I completely understand what you mean. I wasn't looking to get into the social aspect of it at all at first. I was just looking for a website that would let me track/organize my reading to help motivate me to read more. Then I got curious about the groups and joined a few and found them to be really useful.

Maybe that's the reason that my friends and family aren't interested in it, because they aren't really interested in the social aspect of it. Then again neither was I at first. At least you took the time to give the site a once over before deciding it wasn't for you which I don't think any of my friends or family did. Perhaps I didn't do as good a job at describing the site out loud to them as I did writing it down...

It's true that you can't actually download books through Shelfari. Though if you are looking at a book's information page they usually have a link to that book's page on Amazon(Amazon actually owns Shelfari and GoodReads), but I guess in your case if you wanted to download a book from Amazon, you'd probably just go directly to Amazon.

[_Daisy_]

I love GoodReads! I'm not really into the whole "internet friends" thing usually (this is the only social site I actually ever post on), but I love, love, love getting book recommendations based off of what I've already read.

[Shay]

I joined GoodReads recently mostly as a backup in case anything happens to Shelfari. I don't have any knowledge that any such thing will happen, it's just that Amazon now owns both sites so I don't know if Amazon will keep both of them forever. It's conceivable that they might drop one of them or try to merge them somehow. So I figured it would be easier to gradually add my book info onto GoodReads now than to have to catch up on it later if Shelfari does go bye-bye. And just because I'm feeling extra paranoid I'm trying to make additional databases of my books using Excel and Calibre.

After using GoodReads a bit more I will admit that for certain features it seems to be better than Shelfari. It seems like it might have a larger member base and therefore seems to have more active groups and lists.

However, I still think I will always like Shelfari better. I love how Shelfari gives you a graphical bookshelf to display the books you've read. I also like how on Shelfari if they don't have a book edition listed with the cover I want(which I can be very picky about), then all I have to do is upload a new cover image. On GoodReads they make you create a page with the whole new edition of the book, which you need Librarian status to do. Granted it's not that hard to become a GoodReads Librarian. You only need 50 books on your shelf(this can include planning to read books) and then answer an application question stating why you want to be a Librarian. It's still a lot of extra work though. One last thing that really bugs me about GoodReads is how you can't have a book on both your read shelf and your currently reading or planning to read shelves. This seems stupid to me because you can certainly read a book, then read it again, or plan to reread it. On a positive note it lets you track the date you started reading a book which Shelfari doesn't do.

There are actually a few other differences between what info the two sites will let you keep track of and I guess in order to track all the info I want I'll just have to use my Excel and Calibre programs.

[queergradstudent]

I sometimes use librarything.

[Kiwifruit]

I've never used anything like this because I can't be bothered I never feel the need to 'track what I've read' - I don't get this. Is this so you...don't forget you've read a particular book...? So you can look over what you've read later and go "oh yes, I liked that one" or make recommendations to other people? I just don't see why you'd need to use a website to help you with that Maaaybe with making recommendations to people, but other than that, I really can't think of any time it would be useful to me.

The main reason I've never tried tracking what I read is I'd be too lazy to try to add all the thousands of books I've read before to the site, and if I didn't I'd feel it was incomplete and therefore immensely irritating. I do like statistics, it could be interesting...but meh, too much effort to start up.

The social aspect could be fun, but I don't have a lot of time to be looking at such things. I have such a long 'to read' list in my head/on my kindle at all times I hardly ever look for recommendations - I have enough to be getting on with already!

The 'motivation' aspect doesn't appeal either. Reading has always been my favourite hobby and I never feel the need to 'make myself read more'. When I was younger I used to go through a book (not a children's novel either, books written for adults, fiction and nonfiction) a day, easy peasy...if only I had that kind of time now I'm happy with the mix of genres I read too.

So yeah...those are my reasons why not

[Shay]

@queergradstudent

Yeah I joined Librarything as well. Mostly out of paranoia that something might happen to Shelfari. Since Amazon now owns both Shelfari and Goodreads I'm scared that they will either drop one of the sites, or try to merge them so who knows what will happen. Since I like Librarything better than Goodreads I'd want it to become my primary reading site if Shelfari disappeared.

@Kiwifruit

Part of it is about helping me to remember books I've read. Especially if it's a long series and I stop in the middle and want to pick it up again years later, then I'll remember what the last book in the series I read was. Though if enough time passed I'd probably want to start from the beginning again anyway.

Also the main reason I wanted to track my reading was to help set goals for myself and motivate me to read more. I think it was much easier to motivate myself to read before there were computers in my house and there were all those shiny games and various other things to do online. So the website can help me keep track of my goals and help me remember what books are on my reading list. It also has been really helpful with getting recommendations for books. And yeah, like you my to read list is already insanely long, but like an insane person I still keep asking people for more recs.

As for adding the huge amount of books I read before joining the sites, I really haven't bothered. I know it would be impossible to remember them all or when I read them, so I haven't added any books I read before 2012 and I even make a note of that in my profiles for anyone that cares to look at my book list. Yeah it is irritating not having all the other books I've read in my life, but I'd find it more irritating trying to add all those books and not knowing how accurate the dates were that I put down for reading them or how well I liked them because it was so long ago. Admittedly some of the books I marked as having read in 2012 I suspect I might actually have read in 2011, but I really can't remember so I try not going to worry about it.

[Mslovesroses]

I'm just wondering what people think of reading social sites such as Shelfari and GoodReads? If you use them, how do you like them? If you don't use them, is there a reason why not?

I personally use Shelfari and I love it. I looked at a couple of other similar sites, but I just didn't like the interface and features nearly as much. I find it very helpful to use Shelfari to keep track of the books I've read and the books I'm planning to read.

It has a wealth of various groups you can join to find people who like similar books as you and you can even create your own groups if you like. I've found the groups to be very helpful for getting book recommendations and for finding books from new authors that self publish that I might not hear about otherwise.

I also really like the features it has where you can set reading goals for yourself and track them and also view your reading statistics.

Considering how much I'm loving this site, I'm really surprised that none of my friends and family who are avid readers seem to be interested in joining. None of them really gave a reason why, but I guess they just aren't interested in what sites like Shelfari have to offer. One of my sisters did say though that if she was interested in tracking her reading, that she'd just do it in an excel document. I suppose there's nothing wrong with doing it in excel, but I prefer a more graphical interface and it looks really nice to be able to see all of my books on a virtual bookshelf especially since I use mostly ebooks now.

I use GoodReads because I've never heard of Shelfari.