Jason's comments (member since Oct 04, 2007)

Jason's comments from the Goodreads Feedback group.

The only problem with Goodreads getting good publicity is that eventually the corporation I work for might catch on and add it to their "Access Denied" list along with Facebook, YouTube, et. al. And if that happens, I don't know what will happen to my reading habits! For the time being, I think I'm the only one in the company who reads...

As far as success, stories...this is my personal advertisment for Goodreads:

I'm sure we have all noticed the increasing number of articles and attention towards user-generated reviews and blogs in the 21st century and the collapse of the old fashioned job of "book reviewer." Many writers, critics and publishers find this deplorable and lament the decline of quality readership. While I'm still not sure where I personally weigh in on this issue (I think a degree of elitism is necessary), Goodreads has certainly maintained its integrity in my mind. For every flippant, uneducated review or comment I read, I find dozens of well informed, thought provoking insights, often with a much more personal touch than I would find in a few paragraphs of the weekly magazine or weekend paper. When I want a more scholarly review I can go find it (often with the help of this site), but for the time being I have found that a thorough search of Goodreads will give me a better idea of whether or not I will enjoy a book. Perhaps the reason for this is that it is easy to quickly gauge a user's personality, and thus align myself one way or the other with them, while I rarely read enough of published reviewers to get a sense of their personal preferences.

hear, hear. Fiona's suggestion has been my main request since i joined the site.

Oooh...the pretensious part of me really likes the idea of private shelves. That way I can load up all my pulp fantasy novels (and Clancy--thanks for the reminder!) and such without feeling ashamed when my friends ask. It's nice just to have your own personal tally of books, if you know what I mean. the only issue: would those books be reflected in your total book count, or would your total only represent your "public" books?

That's what I thought, Paul:

An "official" Goodreads forum/group (like this one or the Librarians) that is split into two parts: 1. ongoing discussion of topics and 2. completed lists (searchable, of course) that those discussions had produced. Additionally, perhaps this group/forum would be innocuously broadcasted to the entire system on user's Home pages (maybe out of the way, on the side), so that when I log on I would see that they're looking for info on Opera History and I would click on the link and voila!

This is a massive undertaking, however. Perhaps checking out wikipedia would be more expeditious.

1. members with similar books
2. ordering of to-read

Honestly, I don't understand the need for half star ratings. Books are so vague and feelings about them shift from day to day, the broader the rating the better it seems to me. If it helps curtail ratings inflation, though, I'm game.

I assume it's a relatively easier upgrade, so...to each his own.

This shit is priceless. Someone should really start a group so we can all argue with eachother (passive agressively or otherwise) without having to worry about complaints.

EDIT: Oh, yeah... If we end up with a filter like that, can we choose to filter the people who filter people? ;)

This problem can apply to other books as well, but for me the issue arises with Shakespeare:

I've read all my Shakespeare out of the Riverside Anthology, however I have not read the entire Riverside. I don't want to list the anthology, since I haven't read everything WS wrote, and I want each play to be a separate book (cuz it's WS and he deserves it). But I hate all the ugly covers of the different Shakespeare editions.

Any ideas how I could resolve this? Make is possible to list an book as part of anthology without suggesting I've read the entire thing? I suppose this would be an issue with other students/grads.

I have no idea how other people feel about this, but I thought I'd throw it out there and get some advice.

I'm completely fine with having private groups. It's understandle and obviously necessary in some cases. However, the private groups that aren't for specific book clubs or classrooms, which I might be interested in requesting membership to, usually have descriptions vague enough to intrigue me but with so little information I don't know if it is worthwhile to approach the moderator.

What do people say to allowing the thread titles of private groups to be visible, if not the actual content? That way I can at least have an idea of what a group is currently discussing (titles, subjects, etc). Or would it be better if I just contacted the moderator and asked them directly for each group?

just have to throw in another vote here for the "finding people with similar tastes" search. finding random people and using "compare books" just doesn't cut it...

This is a brilliant idea. I give it eleven votes.

Thanks, Lisa. That works well for now. Though a search feature would still be nice in the future.

I agree with Ashley. If you don't like a review, post a comment and start an intelligent conversation. If you do like it, I'm glad to have been of use and that's the end of that.

Perhaps I'm missing something, in which case I just need an explanation/answer...

It would be really nice if I could "Meet People" based on how many total books they have in common with me. Currently, I can click on one of my books and see who has it/who has reviewed it. I'd like to see:
X has 23 books in common with you
Y has 100 books in common with you

Perhaps you could set a limit: I want to see everyone who has at least 50 books in common with me.

Is this a difficult thing to do?