The Extra Cool Group! (of people Michael is experimenting on) discussion

It could just be me but when presented with a choice between sites (facebook, myspace, etc) I prefer goodreads (part of this might be the lack of my mother). What is it about goodreads that keeps bringing us back?

short answer:
the books
the people
the dialogue
the drama

longer answer later...
I also like the design, the non-navy blue aspect of it. It's a well-designed and mostly (what's with this mascot poll?) intelligent site.

am back and forth.
prefer librarything for some aspects, goodreads for others. use both equally.

It's nice to have an online place to just hang out and talk about books. In real life, I don't know very many bookworms, let alone people who share my literary tastes. And the people here are awesome and funny and wicked smart.

Other social networking sites have their benefits (e.g. Facebook is great for keeping up with the daily minutiae of people I haven't spoken with since high school), but they're not any good for talking about books. So Goodreads is more my speed.

Books. I check this site constantly. I'll check it on my ipod in bookstores and libraries to consult my friends lists ratings before deciding to get a book or not.

(And the people here are not psycho like on imdb or youtube.)

It's interest-based. I know that everyone here likes what I like! (not specific books obvs but books in general)

I have a few Facebook friends who post reviews of books they read on Facebook using applications, but there not everyone's a reader and it's more likely that the majority of people seeing reviews posted there are totally uninterested.

In agreement with everyone. Nowhere else would I find people who have opinions on Perec or Sorrentino or other unknown writers I love but my friends couldn't care less about. Intelligent discourse!

Aerin wrote: "It's nice to have an online place to just hang out and talk about books. In real life, I don't know very many bookworms, let alone people who share my literary tastes."

I think this is a good answer.

I tried to use facebook to talk about books, but no one in my network really cared. Books just aren't the focus for facebook.

I've used library thing, but I prefer goodreads' format, graphics, etc.

I like facebook, too, I admit, along with GR. But I don't have many friends with whom I can talk books in real life. Also, GR keeps me from actually doing meaningful work in my office, but in a good way.

I like GR because it's active and filled with mostly-honest, enthusiastic readers. It's like what epinions could have been before it got all scammy.

I really like the quality of reviews here as opposed to someplace like Amazon or another review site, but I also like how almost everybody here is genuinely nice and how when trolls try to come in it just ends up with a really funny thread.

yes, far more conducive to actual dialogue than facebook, for ex.

All the above reasons. But also I'd like to add that the GR development team really listens to its user base. The Feedback forum is one of my favorite places. Even though it's such a big website, I feel like I have a stake in it and I can change it for the better if I wanted to. More than once I have posted a suggestion "maybe if we did things this way it would be better" and (after lively discussion and general agreement with other GR members) the GR team turned around and implemented it within a very short time span. Can you imagine that happening on Facebook? I feel like the owners of FB are like faceless tyrants.

I have too many students on Facebook, here not a problem. Plus, Goodreads has a point. I can find stuff to read and get free books. On Facebook, I can look at drunks. I can do that by looking out my window on a Saturday night. I have discovered, if that is the correct, several books that I wouldn't otherwise thought to pickup because of this site.

My reasons are pretty similar to most here. I don't use facebook or other social media precisely because they don't really have an ostensible purpose beyond just being a social site. And so I use Goodreads and Flickr (photography). These sites are based in the social media model, but exist for a specific (highly useful!) purpose. I use this and not, say, LibraryThing, only because I found this first, and I don't really know anything about any of the others.

LibraryThing's design gives me a headache. It's a good site for some things, but it's targeted more towards anal retentive people, I think. HAHA hope I'm not offending anyone. But it seems like people on there care more about cataloging everything they own rather than rating and reviewing books they've read (whether or not they own it).

Aha. More of a personal database sort of deal instead of a forum for book sharing/discussion. Then I am in the right place.

Nate: at least in my experience, and when LT first started, it seemed that way. I recently re-visited it and they have added all sorts of GoodReads-like features. Members can definitely do MOST of the stuff they do here on LT, but I think the overall site focus/culture is slightly different.

Does librarything charge money? I read they did and was so never moved to join.

I joined Gr 'cause my friend told me to. As far as I know she pays no attention to my habits. I avoided all the join facebook, etc. 'cause they look like soap boxes/avoiding listening to anybody else conversation jogging tools.

I joined because I wanted to comment on an awesome review and then never left.

I love it because if I'm not here then I have nowhere to go to talk about the awesome books I read.

I've never really used any other sites - I did join LibraryThing ages ago, but never really used it. Goodreads is really well designed - it's so easy to find interesting and like-minded people, just by going to the page for a book and reading the reviews. And, as someone said elsewhere, the way the reviews people vote for show up on your homepage! It's great.

Brian wrote: "Jimmy wrote: " I feel like the owners of FB are like faceless tyrants..."

They're CIA. Facebook is a tool for identifying dissidents."

Go, Brian!

I was googling something and dropped into GR and started reading something about Dune and ended up joining without really knowing in what I was letting myself become involved. It's the payback curse for being a surf junkie. I've become utterly unproductive and completely addicted. And now I'm going to sign out and do some work. At least in another 5 minutes...

And twitter is the devil. Sucking your soul 140 characters at a time.

I haven't really checked out other book-related sites, or spent much time on other social networking sites, because I have better things to do. GR lets me do what I want (catalog books, get book recommendations) and lets me skip the inevitable gobs of gooey, strychnine-laced bullshit cookies that are the mainstay of social networking (quizzes, best reviewer lists, people whose only interest is amassing more "friends").

I actually kind of like twitter. It's not as annoying as facebook, IF you follow the right people.

And twitter is the devil. Sucking your soul 140 characters at a time.

YES! I do not understand the appeal of twitter.

I've posted somewhere in this forum as to why I prefer Goodreads over other sites. Facebook, MySpace is more for posting thoughtless things to stay in touch. Goodreads is a terrific social interaction site full of thoughtful book lovers like me. I have never had such an interesting dialogue with people before I joined Goodreads. The variety of groups is also amazing. I moderate a PNR group. I go in there to be free and laugh about sexual matters, with no fear of judgment or censure. I go into the horror forums to have intellectual conversations that are off the beaten track. I love odd topics.

Wherever I go at Goodreads, I find I usually hang out with groups that are full of witty, smart people who don't take themselves seriously. Groups with people that are too full of themselves get tiring after a while.

Facebook is full of my physical friends and family, people that I talk about the weather to and don't reveal my inner world to. It is good for staying in touch and talk about what I had for breakfast that morning. Other book sites do not have the variety or activity that Goodreads has. I am now corresponding with wonderful people across the internet. We reveal personal stuff about ourselves to each other that we keep hidden from the people we see on a daily basis.

So, yes, I LOVE, LOVE Goodreads. I never regretted finding this site when our PNR group moved from Amazon because a few members got banned for initials such a B.J.

Aerin wrote: "(e.g. Facebook is great for keeping up with the daily minutiae of people I haven't spoken with since high school),"

I like Facebook a lot and connecting with old friends was fun at the beginning, but then it dawned on me why they were old friends to begin with. The downside to FB is it's not easy to make new friends there. I can't stand Twitter. Goodreads, based on my short experience here, seems like a really good place to meet new people and make new friends.

At first I liked the cataloging possibilities - I needed a good place to sort my books in two languages. Then I noticed the smart reviews and people who write them.

Mariel wrote: "Does librarything charge money? I read they did and was so never moved to join.


LT is free, but limits your bookshelves to 200 books(iirc). For a subscription, you can get unlimited shelves like we do here.

As for why I came to GR, it's basically because I hit the limit at LT and decided to find someplace better that didn't cost money.

Plus, it's the only place I can actually talk about books to people whose eyes don't start glazing over as they imagine my voice morphing into the wah wah of the adults in Charlie Brown.

GR is the only site I goto for "social" reasons; the other forums I frequent are strictly for sharing technical info and industry news.

I was introduced to GR by an author whom I contacted to say I loved the hell out of his book. He wrote back and told me it was the monthly reading selection for a group here. I'd never heard of GR before, but I was hooked right away.

I am a mentally compartmentalized person, so the groups-oriented format of GR suits me well. Like Thoa, I like having groups to talk about different things. Naturally, there's some crossover as I'm the same person everywhere I go.

Thoa also touched on the other important aspect of GR as opposed to all those other sites I don't use: there's a minimum brain quotient here. In my lifetime's experience, people who read books are more interesting to interact with. There are people here who are interested in the same things I am and from whom I can learn and find new books and new avenues of thought to explore.

I get enough banal inanity at work, at the store, etc. As vast as the internet is, there's no reason to put up with BS online. GR is a BS-free zone* where I can just be me and not have to worry about dumbing down my vocabulary or not being able to follow the conversation because I don't watch tv.

*there's drama anytime n+1 humans communicate, but thanks to my haughty aloofness I have been able to avoid it here.

Brainycat wrote: "*there's drama anytime n+1 humans communicate, but thanks to my haughty aloofness I have been able to avoid it here. "

i find your aloofness to be annoying and disruptive to my daily life. please to be stopping with the ness that is aloof.

the haughty can stay though. i like haughty's.

I'd make a snide comment, but I can't be bothered ;)

I like the minimum brain quotient idea.

I like GR because the people are literate. Where else in this ocean of text that is the Internet can you say that?

Mykle, come on, you know you're just book sex working now by calling us all literate so we'll buy your books and prove it.

Doggie style. There's no sex and too much aloofness here. Okay, got your groins going.

G N wrote: "Mykle, come on, you know you're just book sex working now by calling us all literate so we'll buy your books and prove it."

@G N
It worked, i checked out some of his books yesterday and plan to be doing some reading.

@Mykle
Did you check out wordstock this year? much local love there..

his books are really good, help a bear is eating me is really well done, in the novella book the one about the penis is totally awesome as is the one about the butt, the title novella not quite as amazing, but that is in comparison to him not to other authors who are not as amazing.

also one of his books has pictures of penises (peni?) on every page, that's classy.

The thing that attracted me to Goodreads was that I didn't have to pretend to care about people's kids or pets or taste in music when I was really just curious about what they were reading.

The lack of Farmville-style games is also a big plus.

I was invited.

Dan wrote: "The thing that attracted me to Goodreads was that I didn't have to pretend to care about people's kids or pets or taste in music..."

give it time, someone will fuck it up.
4 million members in 4 years..
this place is due for a farmvillification

Jason wrote: "Dan wrote: "The thing that attracted me to Goodreads was that I didn't have to pretend to care about people's kids or pets or taste in music..."

give it time, someone will fuck it up.
4 million me..."

Don't say that! I love not having a feed that isn't flooded with people asking for chickens.

I can see it now...

It'll be called Bookville.

You'll run a bookstore and everyday you'll have to go in and rearrange the books on the shelves because someone put The Bible in the Fiction section, or Decision Points in the True Crime area.

Communities, lots of varied reviews, specialised book clubs (from m/m romance to Josh Lanyon's Q&A).

At first, I was just looking for an easy-to-use attractive site to list my books. Then I made a few friends and joined some groups and started to enjoy the social aspect of the site just as much as tracking my books.

Coming from a rural area in the heartland, open discussion of books, music, sexuality, politics, religion, freedom, art...are all very difficult even in a sanctuary like a library where I work. To a small degree my book discussion touches some of these but not to the scope and quality that GoodReads members do.

LibraryThing is total shit navigating it and Shelfari doesn't have the GR caliber members or site layout!

Originally, I was intrigued by the idea of a place to discuss books. I live out in the sticks & have never known many people who read as much as I do or like the same kind of books, so the idea of finding others who did appealed to me. I found GR did exactly what I'd hoped.

More, GR has been wonderful for helping me find books to read that I liked through friends with similar tastes in similar genres. There are so many out there to choose from. Amazon's suggestions aren't all that helpful nor have I found the lists or reviews all that good.

There have been a lot of added bonuses to joining GR. Amazon is expensive when you read as much as I do. Friends turned me on to BookMooch & PaperBackSwap.

Also, keeping track of what I've read has become a problem. I've been reading a lot for 40 or more years. A lot of writers, series & similar books have come & gone over that time. Many don't stick out enough to be memorable after a decade or more without a better hint than the blurb on the back.

Getting to know some authors better has been a mixed blessing. Some I really like & it has made reading their work even more enjoyable. Others are better off ignored except for their books.

Jim wrote: "Originally, I was intrigued by the idea of a place to discuss books. I live out in the sticks & have never known many people who read as much as I do or like the same kind of books, so the idea of..."

Me too. It's been a long time since I've discussed books or talked with other readers. I find it quite enjoyable. The only problem is I'm accumulating so many books to read, I wonder if I have enough time left. I spend more time here than at any other website.

I've tried other book sites, but GR is by far the best, IMO.