Keeping Track of Your Book Lists
A recent comment by fellow list producer, Katie C., on my blog about “Keeping a Book List” peaked my interest. Katie told me about a website called LibraryThing.com that she uses to list her favorite books. So I decided to check it out.
She’s right – it’s a great website. It’s a social cataloging site that lets you keep track of your favorite books, wish lists, etc. You can read other user’s reviews and it connects people who like the same types of books. It gives you suggestions about what to read next and can be accessed from anywhere – including your cell phone. So when people ask you “what should I read?” you’ll have all the information at your fingertips!
Basically it’s a social media site for book nerds. Well, I’m in! There are a bunch of other sites and even an application on Facebook that does similar things. But what I like about this site is that it searches the Library of Congress, Amazon sites and more than 80 libraries all over the world. It lets you organize your collection however you’d like – even by using the Dewey decimal system.
Signing up is free but it allows you to only catalog 200 books. That’s fine by me– I probably won’t need more than that. But if you’re a real bookworm you might want to get a paid account that costs $10 a year or $25 for a lifetime! Seems like a small price to pay to get your “nerd on.”
What other book sites do you like to use to keep track of all your reads?
Thanks for the shout-out. So glad you like LibraryThing! It took me about a week before I realized I’d better shell out the lifetime fee of $25 🙂 I love that LibraryThing posts to Facebook (if you want it to) – I had a coworker say today that she added something to her Amazon wishlist based on a FB book post (which came from LibraryThing).
You asked about ideas for future blogs – I think it would be fascinating to hear what medium people use for their lists – whether they like online lists (like TeuxDeux.com, Google Calendar Tasks, etc.) or paper. I’m always curious as to other people’s systems. I personally do a hybrid of both.
(FYI – I changed my website above so it links to my work rather than my healthy living website – as work is where I make list after list…after list…after list!)
Shelfari is another great one and it is free!
Hi Kathy — thanks for reading and for sharing. I’ll checkout Shelfari!