Hot GR Spots, New Tips & Tricks and Random Goodness

[Steph, Serious series addict]

Ah-ha. Thanks for the explanations, Deborah.

[Deborah]

Steph wrote: "LOL! Some techie with too much time on his hands said, "Hey, know what would be cool to track? ... I can build that!""

The developers are allowed to work on whatever they want on Fridays.

[Sandra, Kindle Operator Licence Required]

Deborah wrote: "Sandra wrote: "I had a look at mine, and it looks totally different, and I couldn't work out the axis values apart from years.

And those numbers are weird, I agree."

Yours doesn't parse well beca..."

Trouble is Sophocles wrote in BC 400's so I can't fix that which isn't broken, Deborah.

But thanks anyway :)

[Steph, Serious series addict]

LOL! ;)

[Steph, Serious series addict]

I just noticed GR changed their header again. I always get so lost whenever they do that. Plus, now all my little icons at the top with the # of posts/requests I've not yet responded to are front and center. Gee, thanks for that, make me feel like a snob. LOL!

[AH]

Steph wrote: "I just noticed GR changed their header again. I always get so lost whenever they do that. Plus, now all my little icons at the top with the # of posts/requests I've not yet responded to are front..."
Oh, was that why GR was wonky this weekend?

[AH]

Did you see the new recommendations menu? From your bookshelves names, it recommends books to you.

[Sandra, Kindle Operator Licence Required]

I was just checking out the recommendations. They've done good there.

Though I don't like the missing button beside groups and my books. More clicking required to get where I wanna go.

[Judithe, Soap Operas never end....]

Yeah...I agree. However, I'm miffed about the missing buttons. Where did my "friends popular books" go??? Though, I did enjoy peeking at the recommendations!

[Steph, Serious series addict]

Off to check out the recs. Glad there's at least one good thing about the change. Other than that, I'm missing the big bonus for the update.

ETA: Ok, the recs section is sweet! But, could they have just added that without messin' with the rest that were well set up?

[Lis]

Are the changes made responsible for the missing daily update email that I used to get? Or is that something else??

[Steph, Serious series addict]

I don't really know for sure, Lis. I'm sure there's probably chatter about it over at the Goodreads Feedback group, but I haven't checked. Let us know if you find out anything. Hopefully whatever caused (is causing) the problem has been resolved.

[Lis]

Nope, you guys must be special and got an earlier peek... My new features just showed up today and then I suddenly got 3 days worth of daily feeds too. I checked out the new recommendation feature and I like it!!

[Steph, Serious series addict]

Guess with all the members here it takes a while? Odd. Glad all your feeds caught up. :)

[Sandra, Kindle Operator Licence Required]

Thanks Steph for the Sticky Shelves note in the newsletter, I'd missed that. Yay to Wishlist now being on the first page of shelves!

[Steph, Serious series addict]

:) Welcome!

[Literary Ames]

There's a feature like StumbleUpon which brings up random book pages:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/random

You can try out the new button for shelving books here:
http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/9...

[Steph, Serious series addict]

Thanks, Ames! While I decided to test-drive the new buttons, I'm not sure about the randoms. I'll probably skip using that b/c after running through it 10 times, I got 10 non-fiction books (almost 1/2 were textbooks of some sort). Too bad that feature doesn't pull off your selected genres in your profile. Oh well. Neat idea though.

Again, thanks for sharing!

[AH]

That was cool. I got some obscure textbooks, too. Some of them weren't even in English. It would be good if it tied to your own bookshelves or your friends' shelves.

[Steph, Serious series addict]

Bookshelves or the genres we selected as our faves would be nice. When they say random, they mean it. LOL!

[Lauren]

The "want to read" button is very cool. I love the drop down menu with all of your shelves. Not sure about the color though. I think it may take getting used to.

[Steph, Serious series addict]

I agree, Lauren. The color really throws the muted tone theme off, which bugs my OCDemoness to no end. But, otherwise, nice. :)

[Steph, Serious series addict]

I just noticed "Recommendations" on the top right side of my home page. When you click on "more recommendations", you get this page.

[Debbie]

That link took me to my recommendations?

Is there a way to exclude genres in the recommendations?

[Debbie's Spurts (D.A.)]

Debbie wrote: "That link took me to my recommendations?

Is there a way to exclude genres in the recommendations?"

Not everywhere you can click to get recommendations (for starters individuals can recommend books to you) but a limited option in the recommendations goodreads sends you -- go to "My Books" and "edit" your shelves to see a column where you can check whether or not a shelf gets recommendations.

Doesn't let you do things like filter out YA or other specific genre books but should be showing the genres related to the shelves checked. Certain books on goodreads a group of members seem to delight in flooding all shelves and genres with (no clue why).

I usually find it easier to click shelf and genre names (or "explore by genre") and checkout genres I like. Which still seems to always keep the same old bestsellers front and center.

Has anyone found a way to block shelves from sharing to facebook? Currently I have a delightful mess of " ugh do not buy", "could not finish" and "not for me" shelves loaded to facebook as my favorite books.

[Steph, Serious series addict]

I received a "new release" email from Goodreads saying, "Hi Steph, A book on your To-Read shelf is now available!"

I'm not sure why this is the only one I've rec'd considering there have been many new releases on my shelf. That said, it would be nice (I think) to get emailed on the birthday/release day of my wishlist books.

Anyone else get this? What do you think? Too much GR mail or keep 'um comin'?

[AH]

I think it is only applicable to readers in the US. I have never gotten an email like that and it would be nice, however considering the amount of emails GR generates, it may be overkill.

[Sandra, Kindle Operator Licence Required]

Hmm, I think I agree with AH.

The list of books coming out (though admittedly only from authors I've already got) is in the Monthly GR NL and I frequently see something there I've forgotten to preorder or wasn't available to preorder, so I grab it. That's good enough for me.

[Steph, Serious series addict]

Yeah, I was surprised to see it. Haven't rec'd any others and not sure if I'd like my in-box swamped with a sep email for each and every new release. I like FictFact's "updates about your books and series" email, which does the same thing (alert me to recent releases) in a list.

[Charlene]

Steph wrote: "I received a "new release" email from Goodreads saying, "Hi Steph, A book on your To-Read shelf is now available!"


I received this email the other day too and when I went to look at it on GR, it wasn't on my TBR shelf. I had no interest in the book whatsoever!

[Steph, Serious series addict]

Well that's no good. What a mess. Guessing it's a possible sales technique they're trying out. :/

[Steph, Serious series addict]

GR's latest app update added Recommendations. It's not bad, actually. You can choose one of your shelves then get recommendations - similar to what you already get online. I have only scrolled through one, but found several books to check out.

GR Blog's announcement: https://www.goodreads.com/blog/show/4...

[D.G.]

My husband found this ebook price comparison website:
http://luzme.com/

You just enter the book name or isbn and you should see prices from a number of sources: Amazon, Apple, Google, Kobo, and so on. (Obviously only wherever the ebook is available.)

I found this very useful!

[Steph, Serious series addict]

Cool! Thanks! :D

[Jean ~ Kindle Queen]

D.G. wrote: "My husband found this ebook price comparison website:
http://luzme.com/

You just enter the book name or isbn and you should see prices from a number of sources: Amazon, Apple, Google, Kobo, and so..."

Wow! That's an awesome site! Thanks for sharing. :)

[Sandra, Kindle Operator Licence Required]

Has anyone else noticed that you can now get book-links & covers to go where you've placed the cursor, rather than at the bottom of your comment, when using add book/author ???

[AH]

Really? ? Oh, neat! I saw people complaining about it on the Feedback that whenever you added a Ashes to Ashes, it automatically went to the bottom of the post. Wow. They actually fixed something annoying.

[Sandra, Kindle Operator Licence Required]

Yep, I saw that one and I thought, its always annoyed the crap out of me, so it'll never be fixed. Glad I was wrong :DDD

[AH]

Sandra wrote: "Yep, I saw that one and I thought, its always annoyed the crap out of me, so it'll never be fixed. Glad I was wrong :DDD"

No one really complained before. GR was always buggy and I don't think it was as big a deal as some of their other bugs.

[Sandra, Kindle Operator Licence Required]

True, but when setting up challenges it was particularly annoying. Made a lot of extra work as I never just picked books in order. LOL.

[AH]

Sandra wrote: "True, but when setting up challenges it was particularly annoying. Made a lot of extra work as I never just picked books in order. LOL."

Yup. That was annoying.

[Lauren]

This is a great change. I'm going to have to get used to it though because I've kind of trained myself to copy paste, lol!

[Sandra, Kindle Operator Licence Required]

Yes, that's how I noticed the change - I went to copy/paste and the book wasn't where I was expecting it to be, at all. LOL.

[Steph, Serious series addict]

I'll have to check it out. Like Lauren, I've adapted to how it was, so I'm sure I'll have to adapt to the fix.

And... just noticed the color of the message bar is yellow with a bold highlighted "Moderator" slapped on it whenever we post in our groups. Huh. Guess it's good if you're scanning for a mod's response to a question or something. Otherwise, kinda glaring and somewhat distracting for me.

[Sandra, Kindle Operator Licence Required]

I don't like it. Would be better if we had the option to add it, if we were answering like "important stuff". LOL

Very distracting if you are just posting in the threads to chat.

And once again it just appears, I was over in Feedback last night and didn't see any mention of it, or the fix re the books/covers.

[AH]

I don't like the moderator in brown.

[Sandra, Kindle Operator Licence Required]

OK. Just found the thread in Feedback Group and we do have the option to turn it off.

Us Mods will have a discussion and decide, but I'm betting it goes :DD

[AH]

I do like the pinkish highlight. It's that brown box that just doesn't go with the flow.

[Sandra, Kindle Operator Licence Required]

AH, you see pinkish? I've got yellow background & the brown box.

[Steph, Serious series addict]

I see yellow too. But agree, the bold highlight is distracting. The different color would've been enough to highlight a mod post.