One of the things I’m going to do in 2010 is keep track of all the books I read, using my Goodreads profile. I joined in April of 2009, was a little overwhelmed by it and never went back. But I think it’ll be a great way to track my reading this year.
(I also discovered today I have an empty author page there, so hopefully they’ll approve me soon and I can get it all fixed up.)
Looking around the blogosphere, I’ve realized I have no idea how many books I read in 2009. I can’t break it down by genre or by digital version of print book versus epublished.
Not only will I know the answer to those questions at the end of 2010, but I’ll know if I met my three reading goals for the coming year:
1) Read something outside of the romance genre (not counting King, Scalzi, or Sandford).
2) Read a European historical romance. (This one should be fairly easy because I’m reading Carrie Lofty’s debut now—oh, need to add that to Goodreads—and have Courtney Milan’s single-title debut already on the iPod). I used to devour them, during the height of Garwood and Deveraux, etc, but I stopped at some point.
3) Read something by Gaiman. I’ve seen the movie Stardust and I follow his blog, but I haven’t actually read his work. I’m thinking…American Gods?
I’m really hoping I stick with this for the whole year!
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Oh, Shan, read The Graveyard Book, like now! It’s wonderfully done. If you want to see how to do vivid description in a handful of words…*shivers*
I signed up for Goodreads in 2008, I think, and have done zip with it. I’m trying to use it this year to track my reading. I didn’t know it had an author page. Guess I should figure out how to use that.
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Okay, I’ll start with that one!
And check out Meljean’s author page. Search for a title by her, then click on her name under the title and you can see hers. It’s awesome.
Then you search for your title, click on your name and it’ll take you to your author page. At bottom it says “Is this you?” and then it takes you to where you send email asking to be approved.
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I love Goodreads. It makes it so easy to keep track of what I’ve read. Also to find more books to read from the books my friends liked. Good luck with your reading goals for the year!
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You read more than those three outside of romance. You read AFRAID!
I keep meaning to read Gaiman as well. I even own a few of his books. Brianna loves the movie CORALINE (which I’m not convinced is totally appropriate for her but oh well)
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See, this is why I need a list! I not only read AFRAID, but it was one of my favorite books of the year!
Doh.
I’ve heard of LibraryThing, but I haven’t looked at it. Wasn’t there an issue with it semi-spamming members’ contacts? That might have been somebody else.
I think I’ll stick with Goodreads for now. I’ve already got a couple of books it doesn’t offer a digital edition for, but I don’t have time to learn another site’s system right now.
I really want to see Coraline, but I was thinking of reading it first. There’s a stand-alone app for it on the iPod, but I still think it might suffer in the digital translation. Maybe a trip to the library…
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That was Shelfari.
I use LibraryThing too, but only because I was using it to keep something separate from Goodreads. Maybe books I edited for work? I can’t remember now.
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Please read anything by Marian Keyes (especially Watermelon). They are hilarious. Sorry I missed you on Tuesday.
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*sneaking in late*
Happy new year, Shannon!
*sneaking out*
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Happy New Year, azteclady! I hope it’s an awesome one!
I’ll look her up, Patti. Tuesday was the day my oldest went to the movies alone with a friend for the first time, which got me all frazzled and the youngest had a friend over until it was time to pick up TK. I never got it together.
Ironically, I just checked the mail and your @$%#^&^ Christmas card came back Return to Sender today—nice that I can drive to your house in an hour, but it takes 10 days for an envelope to go from me to you and back. Apparently my ability to invent a fictional setting extends to your mailing address. I’ll have to email you for the real one.
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I haven’t tried Goodreads. I’ve been tracking personal reading on secondary pages of the blog since 2005. I just set up 2010’s page today and copied info from 2008 to the 2005 -07 (now 08) page so I could delete 2008 and leave 2009 and 2010 as standalones.
I do have a LibraryThing account, and I love it for tracking my library. I think I need to do some maintenance though. I haven’t gotten all my books added and I’ve gotten rid of some that are still showing on there. So much to do….
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I deleted my goodreads account because it was constant author promo. Not that there is anything wrong with author promotion. It’s just that I didn’t join goodreads to find new authors. I joined to track my reading. Instead, I had tons of messages each week from authors I’ve never heard of before asking me to buy their books. It got on my nerves.
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I never see those messages, Annmarie. I have my settings set so none of those things get emailed to me (except comments on my reviews or friend requests), and I otherwise ignore (and then mass delete) the little messages on the site. I can go months without ever noticing people have rec’d books so, as far as I’m concerned, Goodreads is a safe zone. I think it’s all about your email notices and how much attention you pay to the little alerts on the side (which are easily ignorable, IMO).
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If I get any I’ll probably notice them at first, taking note of who thinks spamming is a good promotional plan, but then I’ll probably ignore them, too. I should see what my email settings are, though.
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I set up an account a few months ago, but was overwhelmed.. but I want to know what I read even if I don’t remember!
Oh… and I just finished Montana Sky and I read it maybe 8-9 yrs ago. Yeah it was worth the gruesome… funny thing -I didn’t like Tess at all the first time… this time I just loved her – I think has to do with where I am now! Thanks for triggering the re-read!