I signed up for Goodreads last summer and now I’m finally using it thanks to the fact I actually know other people on there — the whole point of it is to make book-reading more social.
Here’s my profile if you’re interested in friending-up — the more, the better.
I signed up after reading an endorsement by Tim O’Reilly. The guy knows more than a little about both publishing and reading in the digital age. Here’s what he thinks of Goodreads:
Unlike twitter, where I follow hundreds of people (possible because of twitter’s minimalism) and am followed by thousands, on Goodreads, I follow and am followed by a small circle of friends and people whose taste in books I trust. As someone who loves books, it is the pinnacle of private social networking for me.
That’s a pretty big statement — though O’Reilly does admit he uses Goodreads rather than Library Thing or Shelfari because it happened to be the first one he tried.
One of the things that held me back (besides not knowing anyone else on it — which never stopped me from using Delicious) was that I’m technically in the middle of many-dozens of books. I’m not much of a finisher. It’s hard to divide my reading list into distinct categories, or “shelves” as Goodreads calls them.
Most of the books I “read,” I don’t really read at all. With very few exceptions I read non-fiction, and my habit now is to simply scan them to get a sense of what they’re about and where everything is, to make sure I’m not missing anything essential, then I set them aside until actually need to use them for something.
I also buy a lot of books that I don’t plan to read — in fact in the past few years I’ve started to buy books precisely so I don’t have to read them. If I have a lot of potential sources of inspiration and corroboration on-hand I won’t be tempted to use “I have to go to the library” as an excuse for delay. If I own something I know it’ll be available whenever I need it, so I don’t have to go through it from beginning to end — at least not until it’s absolutely necessary.
I make regular trips around to the local used bookstores. I always find something on my long wishlist: lots of philosophy, psychology, etc.
My last two trips to City Lights landed me a couple of Michael Polanyi books that aren’t in the London Public Library system. He’s one of the influences I routinely return to; I wouldn’t have written this post (or the title aphorism that I also used on my contact cards) without one of those finds.
It’s kind of a venture capital approach: I buy 10 books, knowing I’ll never read 9 of them but 1 will generate massive returns. It’s difficult to tell which one it’ll be, but it helps if the 10 books are all good to begin with.
And the way to ensure those 10 books are good is to have good friends recommending them — or at least trustworthy and like-minded sources.
Until now my reading hasn’t been social at all. I’ve been pretty good at following paper trails and bibliographies, sniffing out the experts who make the best recommendations, etc. I also have a weird affinity for turning the bibliographical aspect into the story itself.
A lot of that comes out here, and I’m trying to turn it into a bigger project here. I enjoy narratives about influences and insights running into each other.
Last week I happened to notice in this interview that Barack Obama is reading Netherland by Joseph O’Neill. My next thought was remembering that James Wood championed the book in this excellent review, and made it one of his ten favourites of 2008.
My next thought after that was, “what’s James Wood promoting now?” I checked and found another great review, this time of Geoff Dyer’s latest book — introducing me to an author I can’t believe I’d never known before (based on what I’m reading about him, Dyer is pretty much custom-suited to my very narrow taste in fiction and creative non-fiction).
So I grabbed Netherland from the library. I’m going to start it as soon as I finish this post. I have Dyer’s Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi on reserve, it’ll be the next fiction I pick up (only my third, roughly, in as many years). The rest of Dyer’s books are on that long list I keep in my head, picking away at as I stumble on stuff.
Or maybe I won’t like these books. Who knows? I hope I like them because I could use someone else’s stories to save me from dwelling on this one… Feel free to friend me to see how it turns out — and I’d be curious to see what you’re reading too.
