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Already discussed and buried in the Books, books, books thread, but now that we have a separate forum for books discussion I guess we might as well have a separate topic for this service.

So, anyone using Goodreads? I have found it a good way to keep track of my read and to-read books as well as to discover new titles and authors.

Anyway, Idle Thumbs Book Club has its own – much unadvertised – Goodreads group.

And here is I.

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I used to use LibraryThing, but found their UI pretty bad. Goodreads actually supports importing a library from LibraryThing, which is how I moved over. I still do LT's secret santa every year though :)

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Cool, I have been utterly useless at keeping up my Goodreads account (so it is woefully out of date) but I'm signing up!

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Maybe you guys can clear my mind. A lot of my friends use GoodReads but I don't have too much interest in reviewing books for others. What other features does GoodReads offer, what have you found interesting/useful?

I tend to use my Kindle profile to keep track of quotes and books I've read, etc, but I guess it could stand to be a more social experience.

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I just use it to track what I've read, what I own and plan to read, and what I'd like to own and read.

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I'm a bit dubious of recommendation services like Goodreads because whenever I use them I'm always trying to 'game' the system to get the right recommendations.

So, for example, I really didn't think much of Slaughterhouse 5 (feel free to crucify me) - but I know that it's the kind of book that I should like - the kind of book that is greatly admired by a lot of people whose opinion I greatly respect. I don't want to give it a really low mark, and have Goodreads decide 'oh, in that case I won't bother recommending 'Catch-22' (a book I do really love).

(This isn't a vanity thing btw. When I say 'the kind of book I should like', I don't mean 'the kind of books that look right'. I just mean that there are some books that fit pretty snugly into the type of books I generally like reading, but for some reason don't resonate with me.)

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I mainly use it to keep track of the read and to-read books too. It also serves rather nicely as a centralized directory of the authors and their works. I haven't found the actual recommendation service to be very useful (same goes for Last.fm and similar services) but the "Readers also enjoyed" and "Lists with this book" sections yield interesting results every now and then.

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I'm a bit dubious of recommendation services like Goodreads because whenever I use them I'm always trying to 'game' the system to get the right recommendations.

So, for example, I really didn't think much of Slaughterhouse 5 (feel free to crucify me) - but I know that it's the kind of book that I should like - the kind of book that is greatly admired by a lot of people whose opinion I greatly respect. I don't want to give it a really low mark, and have Goodreads decide 'oh, in that case I won't bother recommending 'Catch-22' (a book I do really love).

(This isn't a vanity thing btw. When I say 'the kind of book I should like', I don't mean 'the kind of books that look right'. I just mean that there are some books that fit pretty snugly into the type of books I generally like reading, but for some reason don't resonate with me.)

I actually didn't even know the site had recommendations--I've never used it for that purpose.

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I mainly use it to keep track of the read and to-read books too.

Books to-read actually sounds like a very enticing feature, I have a whole stack of them strewn around my room, in my Kindle, and some that I haven't purchased either way... that might be a great way to organize it.

Actually, double-useful since I read The Great Gatsby and IMMEDIATELY forgot I'd done so.

I think that recommendations take a bludgeon approach on sites like these (Kind of like Pandora, where if you like ONE trip hop song then your entire channel goes wild with it?) but sometimes it opens my eyes to some good things I wouldn't have checked. Sounds like I have a project for the evening, thanks for all the help!

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I use it to track what I've read and to see what people I know are reading (which is better than a recommendation engine given that I know I have some friends with similar tastes).

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I made an account a while ago and went through and added all the books that were on my shelf to the books I've read. The problem is they were all ones I read when I was younger so I didn't know how to review them, so I reviewd them with the scored of how I remembered liking them. This involved a lot of R.A. Salvatore books getting higher scores that they probably deserve (~3stars is what I gave most of them) and Harry Potter books. There's also a lot of Neil Gaiman books (I was adding the Sandman comics and ended up just doing all of his books that I've read) so I don't know what it would recommend to me if I tried, but it's probably not something I'd read. Well, maybe.

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The books to read feature actually sounds interesting to me because I don't necessarily immediately buy the books I'm interested in. For one, they're often not out yet - I'm waiting for the latest Terry Pratchett book to be released right now and hoping I don't forget in the meantime. Beyond that I end up just scanning Amazon occasionally for authors I've heard of or read before to try to figure out which books have recently been released or are soon to be released that I might enjoy. I'm sure I've forgotten or just missed a dozen books over the last few years that I was at one point excited for.

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The books to read feature actually sounds interesting to me because I don't necessarily immediately buy the books I'm interested in. For one, they're often not out yet - I'm waiting for the latest Terry Pratchett book to be released right now and hoping I don't forget in the meantime.

+1 to that. I constantly forget release dates or suggestions of books / games / music, plus the need to keep track of the entire Discworld series which is driving me batty.

I think I'm like halfway through OR AM I?

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