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.

Getting to Know Goodreads

I can't tell you how scary it can be walking onto a movie and suddenly joining this family, it's like going to somebody else's Christmas dinner, everyone knows everyone, and you're there and you're not quite sure what you're supposed to be doing. --John Cleese

Yes, learning a new web tool is somewhat like arriving to a fancy Christmas Dinner late. The food is enticing, the guests are friendly, but you somehow you feel awkward and displaced. And besides, what is that dish, anyways?

One of the first steps Goodreads asks you to complete is to "find friends" via Gmail, Facebook, Twitter and some other options. I opted not to do this step at all when I noticed Goodreads wanted to search my contact list at Gmail (which seemed a little dubious), and also and more alarmingly, post to Facebook and Twitter 'on my behalf'. I feel very uncomfortable letting anybody but me post to my accounts. So, I guess I don't have any friends for the time being, and it raised some interesting questions for me about internet privacy and security.

Not wanting to feel defeated, I ventured further and started setting up my bookshelf. One of the first books I added was "One Day" by David Nicholls--a book with which I have a love/hate relationship. It asked immediately for a review, which I wasn't yet prepared to write. However, I was very impressed when I noticed how many people had rated and reviewed the book. Over 30,000 ratings and 7,000 reviews! This site is certainly generating a lot of traffic. I added a few more books and and simple ratings to my bookshelf before going on edit my profile. There is plenty to add in the profile, including places to list favourite authors and to vote on favourite books on Listopia. I also added a widget to my blog to show books I have read and rated. There is even an option to automatically post your book reviews to your blog, but I decided not to do that.

I'm looking forward to trying a new feature at GoodReads, the recommendation system, which requires members to rate at least 20 books before it generates a list of novel suggestions. I found an interesting blog at the New Yorker in which writer Macy Halford (2011) gives the recommendation feature a mixed review, arguing that although it generates some good suggestions, it doesn't take into account that "[b]ooks are messy and the reasons humans like them are messier". I'll have to try it out for myself.

Aside from the recommendation system, there is much more to explore at this site: exclusive interviews with authors, many well written reviews, discussions to join about the books I've put on my bookshelf, and groups to join. This last topic will be explored in more detail next week.

REFERENCES

Halford, M. (2011, September 19). Getting good at Goodreads [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2011/09/getting-good-at-goodreads-1.html