| good(?) reads |
[Mar. 23rd, 2008|03:19 pm] |
I just sat down with this laptop in my library and fed about fifty book titles (shelves A-C) into Goodreads, with starred ratings. Why? I mean, apart from the obvious fact that I was having a fifteen minute burst of obsessive-compulsive behavior. Is there really much point to Goodreads? Am I just too cranky and antisocial to appreciate this sort of thing? In theory I love that people are social-networking around books, but I don't understand where the satisfaction comes in, or how I got sucked into entering titles and clickety clicking on stars.
They're not even very useful stars! For example: some books, I respect as artistically significant but don't care for personally. So I give them two or three stars. There are books which may not be the greatest literature of all time, but which I was fond of as a kid, so they get high ratings. I'd like a series of stars marked "Thought it was trashy but enjoyed reading it anyway" or "Didn't warm to it, but it's well written and worth reading for its ideas" or whatever. I don't know how to map those concepts to "Liked it" and "Really liked it".
I'm overthinking this, right? I should stick to my original plan of pretty much ignoring Goodreads. But friends keep friending me there, and I wonder if everyone else is on to something I'm missing, so maybe if I feed more book titles and stars into the machinery, voila! A sparkly rainbow of fun will pop out.
Are you on Goodreads? And if so, what are you finding there that you like about it? |
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| Comments: |
I've never looked at anybody's established shelves on Good Reads. I'm sure some do, but I've never had the patience. What I do find interesting is seeing the weekly updates of what my friends have added; it's a manageable list of usually 3-5 books that most of the time I have not heard of.
That makes sense, I guess. It's the huge shelves of books that bewilder me.
I joined, added some books, and quickly figured out that I'd rather spend the time...reading.
I'm on it, constantly receiving friend requests (and I'm friend with a bunch of librarians, who update 50 books a DAY). I never look at it or put anything on it; I always feel very guilty when friended.
Also: Twitter. The world is suddenly following me on Twitter, but I don't ever post to it.
I have social networking guilt.
Ok, 50 books a day is just showing off. So the purpose of this site is to show off! I get it now. PS. When you're a librarian, you really get to read 50 books a day? Sign me up.
I came to it through Facebook, I think. I had already geeked out late in 2006, scanning or otherwise inputting the entire household of books into software (also the books got their annual dusting), so getting the collection all into Goodreads was easy. I like LibraryThing to help me keep track of whether I own a book or not, and I like Goodreads for whether I've read a book or not. It's easy enough for me to keep the sites updated, but as for the purpose or value of the sites, well, no, I can't explain it.
I literally cannot imagine what kind of brain transplant it would take to get me to sit down and input every book I own into a software catalogue. But more power to you if you like doing that kind of thing..? | |
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