Social Media for Booklovers
The other day I mentioned two book-related social media platforms I use: GoodReads (faithfully) for logging the books I’ve read, and LibraryThing (sporadically) for cataloging the books we own.
I’ve experimented with several other platforms—
• BookGlutton is growing on me. It’s an ebook reader for your browser, with some nifty features built in. You can write notes in the margins, and other people can see these notes and comment back—so just imagine, we could all read a book together and discuss it page by page if we wanted.
For example, if you click on that widget it’ll open to the first page of the book, and there’s a chat window (the TALK button on the left) and a place to write margin notes (the MARK button on the right). Has possibilities, no?
(I’m curious—did the widget add to this page’s download time?)
• BookBalloon—a forum for discussion about books and the arts. Every time I visit I wish I had more time to participate there. Very high caliber of conversation. There’s a monthly book club, author interviews, all sorts of good stuff.
• Readernaut—same concept as GoodReads, I think?
• Reading Trails—a place to create lists of related books, in that rabbit-traily way that appeals to so many of us.
And a few I’ve not yet explored:
• aNobii
• Shelfari (I see the Shelfari widget all over the place; it’s the one that looks like a real bookshelf.)
What have you tried? What’s your favorite way to talk about books online?
Beth says:
I use Shelfari to track books I actually read each year, though I’m a bit spotty in my cataloging (and don’t usually track the books I’m reading with my daughter or we’re reading as a family). I keep a running list on LibraryThing of books I love…I don’t necessarily need to own them (some of them are books I’ve read and wished I owned)!
Congratulations, by the way, on the Bonny Glen’s birthday. I have so enjoyed reading here.
On January 22, 2010 at 9:40 am
monica says:
I love the librarything message boards, so much so I need to stay away. I’ll chat for hours!
widget didn’t slow down your site
On January 22, 2010 at 11:09 am
Tasha says:
I use GoodReads but will have to try some of the others you mention. Thanks for the list!
On January 22, 2010 at 11:39 am
MelanieB says:
Wiping the drool off my chin, thinking about the possibilities for BookGlutton and shared marginalia. Sharing notes on the actual pages with a bunch of friends? Chatting in the margins of a book? That might be enough to get me to read ebooks. Oh it brings out the geeky lit professor in me for sure.
On January 22, 2010 at 11:52 am
Kelly says:
I use Goodreads & LibraryThing. I haven’t really tried any others. I love the feature on Goodreads where you can get a daily update of new ratings/reviews from your friends.
But LibraryThing has a much better recommendation system, I think. It seems to better predict when I’ll like a book. So I enter every book I read in both of these sites. 🙂
On January 22, 2010 at 12:15 pm
Maureen says:
I love LibraryThing. I first started using it to keep track of books I owned, but then I realized I read many more books from the library than I ever bought, so I started logging those instead. The tag function has helped amazingly when performing readers’ advisory at work (also known as, Me: “Oooh, and this one, and this one, and THIS one you HAVE to read . . .” Child: “Mommy, the book lady is scaring me.”)
Then when they added collections, it also became the repository for my wishlist. Which should explain why my library tops 3,000 and shows no signs of slowing down!
On January 26, 2010 at 8:05 pm