Week 4, Goodreads

Goodreads Impressions:

I started using Goodreads in graduate school several years ago and have been using it pretty regularly ever since. I often wonder if I would find it as useful if I didn't have so many well-read librarian friends filling up my update feed with great titles!

Overall, I find it most useful for:

• Recording what I've read and what I want to read. When I attend booktalking sessions at library conferences, I always have my Goodreads app open so I can add titles to my "want to read" shelf.
• Categorizing the books I've read for easy access later. Right now, I'm working on tagging the books I've read with appeal factors in addition to general genre tags. I like how Paula Willey tags children's books by the age/grade they'd most appeal to.
• Discovery - the update feed tells me what other people are reading or want to read, and as I mentioned above, this is great when you have so many librarians in your "friends" list. I have not found the recommendations feature as useful, but exploring genres and lists has been a quick way to find new-to-me authors and titles in genres I'm less familiar with.
• Finding out what others loved and/or hated about individual titles. Looking at reader reviews helps me decide if a book might be a good fit for myself or a customer. I don't always rely on the number of stars, since reading is a very subjective experience, but it does help to read gut reactions.

 Recommendations:

 I recommended Garden of Stones by Sophie Littlefield to Melissa Hepler because she reads a lot of historical and literary fiction and liked The Tin Horse by Janice Steinberg.