Rachael's recent posts

Recent public posts (showing 61-80 of 117).

Is your GoodReads account linked to your FaceBook, MySpace, or whatever account and good this person be a friend of yours at that site? This is traditionally the way people mysteriously pop up as GoodReads friends.

If you click the pink "# new" instead of clicking the name of the thread, it will take you to the last new post. I've requested that the link take you to the first new post and that is something that might change, but the last new post usually at least gets you on the correct page and fairly close to the first new post.

I really like the new designs. They look very crisp. I prefer the header above the books (option 1). It makes the image look more integrated with the layout.

Two books I vaguely remember from probably late elementary (early to mid 1990s but the books weren't new when I read them)...

The first was about a boy who worked in a port town, maybe at an inn of some kind. He couldn't remember much about his past and all he had was some weird coin or medallion on a chain. The coin looked like a Half Moon. At some point in the book, he gets mixed up with some bad guys, I think either he overhears them plotting or they recognize him and kidnap him or something, and he suddenly remembers his past. I don't remember the details but it has something to do with Henry Hudson's voyage to find a Northwest passage. Hudson's ship was called the Half Moon. I think the boy's father was a sailor who went with Hudson and was loyal and the bad guys are some of the sailors who mutinied or some such. The boy had the Half Moon medallion because Hudson gave one to all his sailors and the father had left his with his son.

The second book has something to do with a strike in England (I think). It was set at a mill or print shop or something that would have had lots of huge wooden machines in a barn kind of building. There was a boy who had barely started working there when the men decided to go on strike. He had to decide which side to join and there was violence against the strikers and the like. I sort of fell like the kid's name was Ned but I'm not at all sure on that.

It sounds like you've changed what view you're on. At the top of the page, right above your bookshelves, it should say "Views: Main, List, Reviews, Covers..." My guess is you are used to viewing it on Main and clicked Reviews at some some point, perhaps without noticing, and that's why you've seen a change in the past few days.

That said, I do agree it would be nice to be able to have more control over the columns that display on any of the views or to at least be able to pick a certain view (and sort order) to always stick for a certain shelf (e.g. I might have to read as always sorted by the order I've entered and viewed as print while having the all shelf sorted by author and viewed as covers).

I love that the pink "New" links to the new posts. That works much better than linking to the first page and always needing to skip to the last or next-to-last page in some cases. There's one little tweak I would love to see. Would it be possible to get it to link to the oldest "New" post rather than the newest "New" post? If, for example, a thread has 10 new messages in it since the last time I checked it, the link will take me to the tenth message. This means I have to scroll up or click back a page to get to the earliest of the unread messages. I think it would be better if it would take me to the first new message so I can jump right back in where I left off in the discussion.

The number is there after you click. I think he is asking for it on this page before you click, which it isn't.

http://www.goodreads.com/group

I did some messing around to see if I could figure out if it was sorting by title if the sort by field was empty. I usually have my books sorted by author but I switched to title to see what would happen. The first book listed was 1984. Numbers should go first, so this is correct. I checked it and it has nothing listed in the sort by field. Clearly it is still sorting by the regular title. The same thing holds true for several of my books selected at random: they are all in their correct places with nothing listed in the sort by field.

I then checked several of my books that begin with the word "A" and were all still incorrectly sorted as "A ..." They all had information listed in the sort by field and for most of them that information was wrong. And it was always wrong in the same way, namely that the first two letters of the word after "A" had been deleted (for example: "A Gladiator Dies Only Once" was listed as sorting by "adiator dies..."). I corrected all the ones that I checked and resorted my books and every one of the books still sorted as "A ..." It seems like everything is sorting by the regular title and nothing is sorting by the sort by field. Does this mean sorting by the sort by field isn't live at all yet? Is there something wrong in the auto populate program that is causing the first two letters (excluding "A") of the title to disappear or are people entering the title in the sort field without the first two letters?

I posted my original message here because there was just something that bugged me in terms of editing book info as a librarian but it is looking more like I should have posted in the more general Goodreads group because either there is something wrong with the sorting thing in general or I fundamentally don't understand how it is supposed to work and need someone to explain it to me.

I know it is new and I'm glad we have it, I don't understand where there has to be data in the field though. If the title doesn't need to be altered for sorting purposes, why do you have to re-enter it? Why can't the field just be left blank and the system continue to sort by the title?

Whenever I try to edit book data, I get a message that there was an error because the sort by field is too short and requires at least one letter. I then just retype the book title in the sort by field (unless the title begins A, The, etc.). Why is it now requiring that I add something to the sort by field? Is this on purpose or a bug?

I'm using Firefox and added the tab just fine.

GoodReads recently added the ability to create a tab and add the box to the Wall/Info pages. It is fairly easy to do if you already have the GoodReads box on the boxes tab. Just click the pencil to edit and select the Add to Wall and Create Tab (or however they are worded) options. If you don't have the GoodReads box on your boxes tab, go to Applications (link at the top), Profile (link on the left), and click the pencil next to GoodReads to edit its settings. I know you can add the tab and the box to the boxes tab from there. I'm not sure if you can add the box directly to the Wall/Info pages from there or if you have to add it to the Boxes tab and then move it to the Wall/Info pages.

As for moving boxes around on the boxes page, it sucks! I haven't found any way to collapse or the equivalent and I can only ever move boxes up, not down (or maybe the other way 'round).

This is the feature I want more than anything else I've seen suggested/requested!

Two days ago, I would have said not to change it. If you edited questions then, it would automatically reset all the data about people who have answered the question. GoodReads just added a checkbox that will let you make minor edits to a question without erasing the data. I'd say change the second "Dirk" to "Richard" and indicate that it is a minor edit so the data won't be reset.

Dirk does not have any item stuck on his staircase landing. Richard has a couch stuck on his, though.

Whoops. The missing "e" in Belles was just a typo on my part. I always add the "With" to the title and I've no idea why. I know it is wrong, but I do it anyway. Thanks for the catch and making sure we get all the correct info out there.

From what I saw at Amazon, I think The Captive is the one I read and vaguely remembered. Thanks!

I don't really like the idea of people who vote for more books automatically being able to give less weight to their absolute favorites. A couple of other methods that came to mind:

One person can vote for up to five books. No matter how many books one selects, the number one book gets 5 points, the number 2 gets 4, the number 3 gets 3, the number 4 gets 2, and the number 5 gets 1.

A person gets 10 points per list and can decide how to distribute those points. That means one can add ten books and give each one point, or add three books and give seven points to one, two points to the second, and one point to the first, or whatever configuration one likes.

Obviously the maximums in each of these scenarios (5 books or 10 points) could be open to debate. The first example would mean that someone who adds more books to a list has more points out on the list, but everyone's number one, number two, etc. vote would be treated the same so that still seems fair to me. The second option would let everyone have much more control over what exactly a vote means which seems good to me.

There is a sequel, With Bells on Their Toes, about the same 12 kids and at least one other book about one of the children as an adult. Both books about the kids are actually by both Frank Gilbreth, Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey and are based on the real lives of the two authors and their siblings.

I read this book probably 10 to 15 years ago. It had a young boy who was the son of an important man in Africa. The boy's father's servant was going to be allowed to marry the boy's sister but was bitter about his lot in life and arranged for the boy to be kidnapped and sold into slavery in America (or something like that).

I know the book included details on the voyage, but I don't remember much about that. I do remember that when he got to America he didn't speak any English. He and another boy were standing together when prospective buyers came, I think one of the kids was sick. A woman asked the boy if they were brothers and he repeated the strange word so she talked her husband into buying them both because she thought they were brothers and didn't want to split them up. The next scene I remember was one with the two boys doing some work in the snow and talking about how different things are and mentioning that they can now speak English. I don't remember anything else about the book at all.