Goodreads

new shelf chooser

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 18:00:57 -0800

We recently launched a small update to the way we shelve books on Goodreads. Now when you click on "choose shelves," you should see a widget that will let you quickly search through all your shelves, scroll and select with either your mouse or arrow keys, and add new shelves. Hopefully this will make it a bit easier to add books to shelves.

posted by Ken-ichi on November, 05

Welcome to Louise Yang!

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 19:09:03 -0700

We have a new team member! Louise Yang joins us as a Software Engineer and rockstar bug fixer. Louise will be helping out on various engineering projects, and even though she's new to Ruby on Rails, she's already made a few contributions: new group rules, new group settings, new search tabs, and new inbox compose page.

Here is a bit more about Louise:

Louise went to Berkeley to study Linguistics.
She also studied CS and picked up some tricks.
When she's not coding, she cooks.
Her shelves are overflowing with books.
If you find a bug, it might be something she'll fix.

Please give her a big welcome!

posted by Otis on October, 22

October Newsletter!

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 20:27:06 -0700

This month we interviewed authors Audrey Niffenegger and Nick Hornby for our newsletter.

Audrey Niffenegger not only wrote the bestselling novel, The Time Travelers Wife, but also has a distinguished background in the visual arts. It’s unusual and exciting to talk to an author who is talented in disparate areas. Her new novel, Her Fearful Symmetry, sounds deliciously creepy.

Our second author, Nick Hornby, has a broad appeal as well. After all, his debut memoir, Fever Pitch, is steeped in his own soccer obsession. According to FIFA (Federation Internationale de Football Association), more than 265 million people in the world play soccer and as many of you know, their fans take the sport seriously. I remember going to my one and only European soccer game in Bologna, Italy. Since I was rooting for ACF Fiorentina, I sat in a chain-link cage while Bolognian spectators threw glass bottles at us. It was terrifying and well…a little bit exciting. Hornby’s later novels, High Fidelity and About a Boy, also garnered high marks. His new one, Juliet, Naked, explores rockstar fandom.

We also got "In Bed" this month with two very different authors, Eoin Colfer, of the Artemis Fowl series, and Dacre Stoker, Bram Stoker's great grand-nephew. We asked them to name their favorite Science Fiction books and books about vampires, respectively. The vampire thing may be ubiquitous, but we figured if there were any month to touch on this trend, October would be the right one!

Please check out Movers & Shakers for some twisted fairytales, inspirational memoirs, and lush Edwardian sagas. And our Lit for Lat discovery this month is Supermarket by Satoshi Azuchi, an intriguing Japanese business novel set in the 1970s. Don’t forget to read our winning poem Lynette’s War, from the iPoetry! Poetry Contest .

We hope you enjoy our newsletter!

P.S. We will be interviewing Barbara Kingsolver next month. If you have any questions for the author of The The Poisonwood Bible and the Bean Trees, post them here!

posted by Elizabeth on October, 06

Goodreads is much faster!

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 18:05:58 -0700

Goodreads has grown quite a lot in the last year, and to support our 2.5 million users and over 30 million monthly pageviews, we had to upgrade "what's under the hood" - and get a whole new set of servers!

Our new servers are lean, mean, and really freakin' fast. Oh - and did we mention SSD's? The change should help us continue to grow and handle more traffic - and it should also finally let us focus on new features instead of scaling problems!

Our old servers were rented from Media Temple, which we highly recommend for any small and growing site.

Here are some beautifully done shots of the new colo, taken by Michaels iphone, in between some intense sessions of installing software:

We like to imagine that Goodreads is now powered by something like this:

ps. This post in no way promises that we will still be fast in coming months if you all keep browsing more and more pages. But we like to think it will!

posted by Otis on October, 01

Scheduled maintenance tonight

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 23:19:14 -0700

Hi all,

We are moving to a new datacenter tonight, and Goodreads will be down from approximately 8:00pm pst to 11:00pm pst. Our poor old servers have served us well, but their time is past and we have some young, hungry, and very *fast* servers waiting to go.

We know Goodreads hasn't been the fastest of websites lately, and this should really improve things if it all goes well.

Wish us luck!

posted by Otis on September, 30

September Newsletter

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 21:18:07 -0700

Finding the right balance of authors and books for our newsletter is always challenging. With 2.5 million members, we have every kind of reader imaginable.

Our goal then is for any reader to be able to find something recognizable in our newsletter, and we are constantly juggling genres to find the perfect mean of fiction and nonfiction.

This month we interviewed authors James Ellroy and Anita Diamant. The former is a crime writer with a naughty reputation, the latter, a journalist and author whose historical fiction showcases women in a new light.

We also got "In Bed" with the co-authors of Traveling with Pomegranates: A Mother-Daughter Story, Sue Monk Kidd and her daughter Ann Kidd Taylor, asking them for their favorite books about mothers and daughters.

Please check out Movers & Shakers for a provocative YA recommendation, and some very fine fiction and nonfiction new releases. And our winning poem, BODIES: THE EXHIBITION, sparked yet another heated discussion (scroll down) about the merit of rhyming poetry.

We hope you enjoy our newsletter!

P.S. We will be interviewing Audrey Niffenegger next month. If you have any questions for the author of The Time Traveler's Wife, post them here!

posted by Elizabeth on September, 09

Sign into Goodreads with your Facebook or Google login

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 18:25:47 -0700

We've just fully launched a new feature we've been beta-testing for a while: the ability to login or register for Goodreads with your Facebook or Google login credentials!

This will be very useful for many members as it means less hassle of having to remember your password in order to use Goodreads.

Want us to add other OpenID providers? Mention them in the comments!

posted by Otis on September, 01

Final Encore for Reading Rainbow

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 13:12:37 -0700

When we were little, my brother and I were not allowed to watch much television. Our viewing choices included Sesame Street, Square One, the Muppets, and, of course, Reading Rainbow. Sadly, after 26 years, Reading Rainbow is now off the air due to insufficient funding for PBS.

I remember gleefully singing along with the theme song. So, for one final encore, let's all sing along with Reading Rainbow!

posted by Jessica on August, 31

Hundreds turn out for Goodreads/Book Soup book swap

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 16:39:16 -0700

What could beat free books and yummy Kogi tacos on a beautiful Saturday? The answer for the (estimated) over 200 people who came to Book Soup bookstore in West Hollywood this weekend: nothing.

This was our third co-hosted bookswap, all of which have been in Southern California, and each one of which has been a special and fun event. Our first one was co-hosted by Equator Books in Venice Beach, and the second was with Young Literati Foundation of the LA Public Libraries at the Mar Vista Library.

The goal the swap's is simple: encourage people to get rid of the apparently boxes of books they have accumulating in their houses, pick up some new books, socialize a bit and enjoy a beautiful day. In each case the excess books have been donated to the local library.

We think the swaps have been so successful that we'd love to branch out beyond Southern California (where we're based). So if you're an indie bookstore or library and would like to host one, please contact us. We've found that a good swap has the following elements: lots of tables for people to lay out books, having a famous author signing or two combined with it, and of course having free or cheap food and drinks. If you can get the Kogi Taco truck even better!

Pictures are worth a thousand words, so here are some photos of the event. Much thanks to Carolyn Kellogg and the LA Times for covering the event!

* Most photos by Carolyn Kellogg

posted by Otis on August, 18

August Newsletter!

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 16:10:33 -0700

Our newsletter this month includes author chats with Rebecca Wells and Lev Grossman.

Wells is best known for Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, but her new book, The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder, also has fans talking. Wells has been living with Lyme disease for nearly a decade and is a spokeswoman for the illness. She’s a very inspiring woman.

Grossman’s book, The Magicians, may appeal to a different group of readers. Although many critics have compared the Time magazine book critic’s new work to Harry Potter, Grossman will tell you that his story of a disillusioned student of sorcery is something quite different.

August is a great month to go outdoors and enjoy the weather before the season fades. I went to Montana this summer, which is always a treat. As a city dweller, I’m perpetually humbled every time I see a bald eagle perched in the pines, a black bear pawing through the chokeberries, or a silvery, cool cutthroat trout breaking the surface of the Blackfoot river.

In the spirit of everyone’s inner outdoorsman (or woman), we asked Vermont-based author Brad Kessler, author of Birds In Fall and Goat Song, to share his favorite books about listening to the rhythm of nature.

Books by Thomas Pynchon and Dave Eggers were among the Movers & Shakers this month and please don’t forget to sample Ruth Goring’s winning poem “After You”!

We hope you enjoy the August Newsletter!

P.S. We have some exciting plans for the September newsletter including interviews with James Ellroy and Anita Diamant! We would like to include questions from our users; if there is anything you’ve been dying to ask, please put your questions in your comments below!

posted by Elizabeth on August, 17