Getting up to Speed with Goodreads

I have lost friends, some by death, others through sheer inability to cross the street. --Virginia Woolf

And sometimes, there seems to be an inability to find them online!

A small confession to begin: in order to obtain the screenshots for this post, I cheated a little. I started using a web tool I'm not officially planning to explore until later in the project. Jing. Yes, I downloaded Jing and within five minutes was doing screen captures and editing them. Oh, so simple. And surprisingly fun!

However, to return to the topic of this post, I've had a very productive 'play-date' with Goodreads today. I started out by adding and rating twenty books for my bookshelf so I could check out the recommendation system. The results are so-so. By sifting through the results, I did find a few suggestions to put on my to-read list, including some interesting educational titles. However, if you rate the occasional book that isn't your standard reading-fare, it will throw the recommendations off and you will find yourself checking lists of books that would never appeal to you. I suspect finding books to read would be more easily and accurately done by following or friending a person with similar tastes to you.

One very positive feature I discovered today is that there are many authors who seem to be actively using the site and you can become a "fan" and follow their activity, such as updates, blog posts and the books they review. You can even send them messages. I discovered this when I noticed, in a long list of reviews by users, a review by a name I recognized: Greg Mortensen, the co-author of Three Cups of Tea and Stones to Schools. I was quite interested to see that he is rating and reviewing books just like the rest of us! As a result of this discovery, I've "fanned" two authors I like and I will see where this leads over the next few weeks.

One down side of this social cataloguing site so far is that I'm finding it hard to connect with anyone. (Sadly, I still have no friends.). I tried the Facebook "friend search" method again, and this time disabled Goodreads' ability to post on my behalf. I did find one Facebook acquaintance using Goodreads and I sent her a "please be my friend" message. Then I sent pleading emails to two "real-life" friends who are avid readers to please join the site. After all, if you don't have any friends, who is going to read your reviews? Whose bookshelves are you going to check out? Goodreads, without any friends, is a lonely place!

To finish off this week's web journey, my bookshelves are now populated and three reviews are complete. During this coming week, I'll investigate discussions and groups, as well as Goodreads in the classroom.