Monday, April 7, 2014

Goodreads

I love Goodreads.  It's a book community that has a lot of cool features.

-You can read and write book reviews, like on Amazon, but unlike Amazon, you can choose to simply rate a book (give it a certain number of stars) without having to write a full review.
-The system will then recommend books for you.
-You can compare your books with friends or people you meet in the forums.  If you've read the same books, they show your ratings side by side, and give you an overall percentage of compatibility.  Very interesting.
-The forums discuss books, writing, movies, language, and all sorts of things (though it's true that some books get reduced to things like "camp Edward" or "camp Jacob" discussions).
-You can take fun book quizzes (or write book quizzes)
-You can vote on lists of books
-You can join book clubs and do reading challenges
-You can enter to win free books in the giveaways
-If you're an author, you can promote your book or join review groups to get those all-important reviews.
-If you're a voracious reader, you can join review groups for free e-book copies of books to review.  
-You can reaffirm your faith in the fact that people are still reading.

If you aren't a member, think about joining.  It's free and fun.  

2 comments:

  1. Goodreads is full of conceited people with logorrhea. They ramble on and on for pages! They forget that they are supposed to be discussing a book, not writing one. And they love to summarize, often in great detail. NO! That is terrible behavior! A good review discusses some aspect of the book. A bad review plagiarizes and parrots the book, basically making it into a short story. A rerun! I have read the book! Don't be giving me a summary! People don't go to Goodreads to read summaries and decide whether or not to read a certain book according to the reviews, they go to Goodreads after finishing a book to see what other people thought about it and to discuss its deeper details, meaning, and implications.

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  2. I think some people read the reviews to see if they want to read the book, so summaries might be useful, but I too prefer discussions and critiques and what the reviewer liked or didn't.

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