Sunday, March 6, 2011

Good Reads- I'm Late to the Party

 My favorite art installation in San Fran- open books, suspended overhead...
and the sidewalk directly below them, covered in words that "fell out" of the open books. Lovely.

I may be the last person on the planet to catch the Good Reads train, but just in case I am the second to last I wanted to share the knowledge.

Good Reads is basically a social networking site built around books you are reading. You have a profile that is similar to a Facebook/Myspace (whoa, what is Myspace? haha) profile with your picture, some general info, and then specific info about books you like to read, favorite authors, quotes, etc. You search for books within the site, and then you add them to your bookshelf- under the categories of read, reading, or to read. Once you've read a book, you can write a review, note the date you finished it, and rate it with a star system. A lot of my friends were already on Good Reads (like I said, last one to catch that train), and friending someone is virtually identical to how you would do so on Facebook/Myspace. Once you are friends with someone they can send you book recommendations, and you can see their bookshelves and vice versa. You can also comment on the books they are reading, which show up in their feed on their profile.

They had a specific section on my profile for a "2011 Reading Challenge" and all I had to do was enter my goal- 52 books- and now I have access to a little widget for my blog. It keeps track of how many books I've read, and what percentage of my goal has been accomplished. I was also able to get a widget for my bookshelf, so I added both at the very bottom right of my blog. This is a much better system than what I was using before- entering book names into Google calendar under a "Book" calendar I had created- plus I get the dorky joy of having a little countdown widget. A special thanks goes out to my friend Jenny for giving me the heads up about Good Reads! If you're an avid reader or you have a 2011 goal for book reading I think you'll love this site.

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