For the Enthusiastic Reader

For those of you who really love to read, GoodReads.com is a fabulous website.

There are many things to do. You create your own shelves of books you have read, wish to read, or are reading. You also rate them, and write book reviews to gain the interest of other readers. You may join communities of other readers, and there are even quizzes you can take to test your knowledge over books.

There's all sorts of information on books and authors and upcoming book events. If you're really feeling lucky, you can try to win pre-relased books. I can tell you that even I won a book.

It's a great site, and I really love it so far. I figured more people should also give it a try.

So I clicked on it, and started inputting books that I've read, and I made the mistake of starting on my Star Wars books. Haha, this might take a while.

I'm glad you decided to try it. It's really good. Rating books made me want to reread all of them, so I could give a proper review of them.

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing about some of the books I haven't read in a while! But it'll take me forever to read them all again. ;-;

What are some of your favorite books?

I don't know. I generally really love any book I'm reading if it's good. I've read a lot of books that I really love, but I can't really say I have any favorites. =3

Hah, that's perfectly understandable.

I thought I would share this:

Sometimes, I win pre-released books from GoodReads.com. This usually means that the author is sending their books to people before the publishing date, so that average people may read the books and write a review for it.

Well, in late 2009, I won Masters of the Confluence by Nduka Onwuegbute. I really enjoyed the book, and I wrote a pleasant review about it.

A couple of weeks ago, the Onwuegbute sent me a message on GoodReads with a link to both the front and back cover of what he wants to include. The front cover was the same as the one that I received, but the back cover contained quotes from both the usual big-names and from average people from all over the world who had read the book.

A quote from my review was among them. I was representing the USA, and the only problem was that he misspelled my first name. I told him of the error, so it will be fixed.

Anyway, the PM was to make sure it was okay with me, and it was so yeah. Though my quote wasn't anything spectacular, it's still really cool that my quote made it onto a book cover at all. It's not to help garner interest for a good book while getting recognition for it. =3

That's awesome, Kathryn! I'm going to have to check out this site. I don't know how I missed this before. I want to make my own virtual library!

I really love it. You guys can always add me as a friend or whatever if you join the site. This is my account.

I've created my profile...but I've only added a single book so far. I will update when I have some more time, and I'll add you as a friend

Hey Kathryn, do you know if there is a way to customize the order of books in your bookshelf? I know you can click the links at the top to organize it into a few different categories...but I can't really stand any of them. They aren't really organized. Let me know if you know.

Oh, and my page is here if anyone is interested.

Edit: I just found it. Turns out you can't do it with the two standard shelves, but you can with any shelves you create.

Well, one can do it with the "to-read" shelf which is a standard one.

What you do is you go to the "to read" shelf, click the word "edit" which is above the list of books beside the word "views" where it has the list that reads, "main | list | reviews | covers | print | edit | owned | rss." If you click the word "reorder shelf" in the menu that appears, it'll let you select the number at which you want the books to be in your list.

As it is, I just have mine sorted by author which was accomplished by clicking the black, bold text that reads, "author" which is above the list of books.

I forgot about that one. I had it organized by author...but I would rather have it organized in numerical order as far as how the order they came out in each series. So that is how I'm doing it now.

I just stumbled upon this thread, and as an avid reader and writer,
I'm sure I'll love it! I'm off to check it out right now. Thanks so much for sharing, Kathryn.

No problem! It's one of my favorite websites!

I don't go there often enough anymore. But that probably has to do with the fact that I'm not really reading right now...

That's okay. It's there for whenever you want to use it. I doubt your not going there as often as you'd like will make it disappear into the abyss. ^o_~^

I just thought I'd share that I love the site and that I actually won a book too! Very cool.

Thanks so much for sharing this, Kathryn. It's an excellent site and definitely one of my new favorites!

Yay! Congratulations on winning a book. It's so much fun. ^^_^^

Thank you! And it is! I absolutely love it. Thanks so much for sharing that site. It's a wonderful place for a book worm like myself. Heh.

I just figured that a good group of role players would like a site that helps them to keep track of their books. I know it's helped me a lot, and I love writing reviews for what I read. Plus, it's helped me with my 50 Book Challenge a lot, too. ^^_^^

I think it's going to help me with that challenge as well, and I've always loved reviewing. I spent four years writing reviews for the high school newspaper.

Not to mention, I won a free book. How awesome is that?!

It was a fantastic idea to share GoodReads. I'm soo happy you did.

I think I've won like... four different books, but the last one was a book of poetry, and I haven't finished reading it. Prose is definitely more my thing than poetry. I don't feel like I should try to win more books until I've read and reviewed this book of poetry, though.

Fair enough. I won a science fiction book that I'm really eager to read called "Time, EmiT, and Time Again", which I will definitely be reading and reviewing.

I need to add more to my "read" shelf. I've read so many books and I can't even think of them all. It's ridiculous.

I've read a lot more books than I have on my "read" shelf, but I don't want books on my "read" shelf if they don't have reviews, and I don't think I can give a legit review without having recently read a book. You know?

Ah. I do know what you mean and that sounds perfectly reasonable to me. I never thought of that, having a review for each book, though I'm trying to write a few more.

How do you win a book? That's my perplexing question.

You see how there are options along the top that read Home, My Books, Find Books, Friends, Explore, and Groups? If you click Explore, it'll take you to a page where there are different tabs. They're on the right side near the top but under the search bar. They read Browse, Giveaways, Popular, Swap, and eBooks. You want to click the Giveaway tab. It'll take you to the page that lists the books that are up for winning. After you put your information into the specific books you want, you just have to wait and hope you have good luck. ^^_^^

Oh snap! That's how you win free books! Thank ye kindly!