I've been a member of Goodreads for a while, ever since one of my relatives suggested it to me. This is a website for inveterate readers, but you have to take some time to make good use of it. On this site, you post the books you've recently read and rate them, using an easy to use five star system.Users can publish a review of a book if they want, but this is not required.
Users don't have to write out lengthy book info to find books, because they can search by author, title and other key words. The search box is easy to find and use. There are several tabs on the Home Page. If you hit the My Books tab, you will go to your book list. Using the green Add Books tab you can search for any book you want to list.
Another tab lets you search for any books you want to read. For example, I wanted to see all the books that Lee Child wrote since I am headed on vacation and needed a light, exciting read. I entered his name and all his books popped up.
You can look at books your friends have entered, and you can use these for recommendations. I've been absolutely delighted with this service. I found I have a cousin with similar taste to mine in books. I wind up getting what she reads, and I hope I give her some good tips too!
The site solves a problem for me: so many books, so little time. I want to hone in on books I'll enjoy when I have time to read. My mother was a fanatic reader who would bring home stacks of ten books at a time from the library. She would go to the library and browse to her heart's content, and she found her books through trial and error. I go to school, have an empty nest that gets filled with young adults sometimes, write this blog, volunteer, and spend many hours researching this blog. I don't have time for trial and error. I read the New York Times Book Review. And I go to Goodreads at any time of the day or night and search for books. I can order them online, or if I can wait, I'll make a list for the library. Either way, it's a great resource for me.
Goodreads is an excellent place for Boomers to explore books and authors. When you hit the Explore tab, you are given a list to explore. I hit the Books section and came to a group of lists on which site users had voted. I lost myself in the list of Books Everyone Should Read at Least Once. Then I looked at the Best Books of the Decade list. Soon I was clicking off and rating as many of these books as I had already read, and I was making a note of the ones I hadn't read for future reading. If you hit the Authors button you will come to great interviews with authors and other reading material about the authors of books. Fledgling writers publish their own stories and chapters on Goodreads, and that's another interesting section.
While writing this post, I found another use for the site. I will now begin to use it to keep track of all the light reading I do on vacation. I think I've read every single Kellerman (both husband and wife) book out there, but maybe I haven't. If I begin listing them and keeping track of them, maybe I'll figure out which ones I haven't read! Stay tuned.
I hope I've given my Boomer readers some inkling of why I enjoy this web site, and I hope you'll give it a try. I have no connection with Goodreads in any way. I just love to read.
Here's a list of some other web sites for readers. Maybe you'll like these better.
This will be my final post before heading on vacation. I'll be back the week of January 11th. I promise not to post from the beach!
1 comment:
Generally I do not learn post on blogs, however I wish to say that this write-up very pressured me to check out and do so! Your writing style has been amazed me. Thank you, quite nice article.
Post a Comment