LibraryThing

I've had a LibraryThing account in the past and am becoming somewhat tempted to create a new one after looking at it again for this assignment! I deleted my account before because I wasn't using it very often and found it a bit clunky and ugly to use (Goodreads and Shelfari are two other similar online book sites where you can list your books, read reviews and find other people who like the same books and they are both more attractively designed.) Also, as I continue to mention, I don't like having so many accounts on different websites! Yes, it's free, but all this freedom comes with a loss of privacy. I sometimes worry about all the forgotten accounts I may have floating around the internet, with I don't know what personal information attached to them. So.

My other complaint with all book sites like this is that it takes a while to load all the books in your collection and pick the right covers for them, give them a rating or review, tag them by subject and sort them into categories (to be read, wish list, that kind of thing), etc. If you get fussy it can become a bit complicated and take time away from reading. On the other hand, it's a great way to network with other booklovers and find great new book recommendations.

I've looked up The Waves by Virginia Woolf on all three online book sites I mentioned, LibraryThing, Goodreads and Shelfari, just to see what information and user content each site had on the same book. LibraryThing had only 19 reviews, with 2000 people who had listed it in their library, and only showed the way others had tagged it, who else had it in their library, with a list of ten similar novels. Goodreads had page after page after page of reviews (it says over 4000 but many of them are just a rating or a very brief comment), with links to discussion posts, lists and groups that had mentioned the novel. Shelfari had 30 reviews, with 1075 people listing it in their library, and it also included a long section with information about the characters, setting, themes and symbolism and included memorable quotes, all of which would be very useful for understanding the book and deciding if you wanted to read it. Shelfari also has the best design of all three (you can see all your books on beautiful virtual bookshelves), although I think the most popular may be Goodreads and that's part of the fun with these sites, being where everyone else is! So now it's just a matter of deciding which site I want to use and when I want to take the time to enter all of my books all over again......