Goodreads

[cimorene]

I signed up for goodreads (here) because I read this news item last night that got me all WHEE LIVING IN THE FUTURE!:

Goodreads Has Acquired Discovereads

On Thursday, Goodreads will announce that it has acquired another start-up, Discovereads.com. It uses machine learning algorithms to analyze which books people might like, based on books they’ve liked in the past and books that people with similar tastes have liked.

I had a vague idea that Goodreads was more like... I guess Librarything? Which I see people mentioning. It seems to be intended as a sort of book queue/book rec/book review blog, as opposed to cataloging one's library. For example, when you enter a book it asks what exact date you finished it. Obviously you don't remember what day you finished every book in your library unless your memory is eidetic or you don't own any books.

But the thing is, if you want this algorithm software to be able to do its thing, the more data it has the better, so it's certainly in the interest of Science to enter everything you've read and rate it as best you can. I suppose I'll just ignore the date field from now on unless I'm writing a review or something, but it's irritating to my slight OCD tendencies. (Although, speaking of those, it's probably good that it doesn't have a complete set of ID3 tags and a library-catalog setup or I might fall into a compulsive vortex and wake up hours and shelves later, suddenly realizing I'd forgotten to eat.)

Comments

[copracat]

This is awesome. I only just finished putting in the info from my old book blog so I have a whole lot of data. Woohoo. This is definitely motivation to work on uploading the whole library. I've mostly used GR to track my annual reading and that might just change.

[cimorene]

I know, right? It might be the ONE thing that I MOST want out of the future!

[torachan]

GR definitely seems more social than LibraryThing. I partially imported my library from LT, it choked over the manga and Japanese books and fucked with my tags and just ended up all sorts of messy and blah so I haven't really touched it since then, however, I get a pretty steady stream of notifications of people liking my reviews and such, so there seems to be more interaction than on LT. At some point I'd like to clean it up and start using it more, but it just feels like such a hassle. I wish I had heard of it first rather than LT...

[cimorene]

Adding new things is a bit of a hassle, too. The popup properties only works on the "my books" page from the list of ones you've already added - any other way to add a book to your library (like from browsing a list of titles where you can click "add to my library" or "my rating" in 1-5 stars) just adds it as "read", and you have to open a whole separate window just to add basic tags to it. It's kind of useless without tags. Also it's annoying that they call tags "shelves". You can't exactly put a book on more than one shelf!

[pierydys]

*cough* ...or if you started a catalog of every book you ever read (with page counts, ISBN numbers and dates) when you were in elementary school and have faithfully updated it with every new addition for the past few decades like a good little geek.

You're telling me there's actually a whatsit that can analyze all this random information and help me add MORE entries to it? :-D

[cimorene]

Oh my god, though, the thought of the DATA ENTRY for putting that amt of info INTO GoodReads just makes me cry! o_0

[pierydys]

Hmm... I have a smidge under 1000 entries dating back to 1988, though there are a few errors from when I had to transcribe the first few years from notebook to computer when we got our first PC. It started from a local library's summer reading program, where we got little awards for reading a certain number of books. Once I started cataloging, I just couldn't stop ;-) I suppose this will be a little side project for me to work on when my fingers are too sore and need a break from crocheting...

[cimorene]

True, I've had to take breaks from it recently due to elbow pain several times.

How many balls of yarn did you use for the blanket, I meant to ask? I'm planning a lightweight crocheted cotton one for a summer bed coverlet, to be made in squares, but I was warned there's a huge amount of yarn involved that can get pretty expensive. I also want to do a more colorful mosaic blanket to go in the livingroom, something decorative in multi-colored hexagons or squares maybe, but I figure once I get some of the colors I want to use I'll just work on that between other projects.

[pierydys]

The blanket took 12 skeins of Katri (http://www.ravelry.com/yarns/library/novita-katri) and ended up only being 3x4 feet, but that was probably because I was using a fairly thick yarn and a thick texture. With a skinnier yarn, larger hook and flatter pattern, you could probably get a pretty large blanket out of 12 skeins. I chose that yarn because I knew I'd have to get a bunch of it -- it was acrylic and therefore cheaper than any of the other stuff -- EUR 2.20 a skein, according to my notes. Very reasonable final cost, I think.

[cimorene]

Oh yeah, the cost wouldn't be as much of an issue with acrylic yarn. I could definitely use that in the livingroom. The bed coverlet's got to be cotton though. That's the nicest texture/feel for a summer blanket.

[cimorene]

Here's a tip: You can search for a list (they're in a category called Listopias) of writers or whatever that you have many works of. Then you can just scroll down the page and click the 'add this to my library' hover menu (or clicking on the 5-star bar labelled 'my rating' does the same) without needing to open separate pages or run separate searches for each one. Tagging is a bit of a hassle b/c you can't tag multiple items at once, but if you go to your My Books page, set the 'display' to a large number, and then scroll down to the first untagged book (at the bottom), when you type in the tag you want to add and hit 'enter' to select it, it reduces the drop-down list so only that tag is displayed. Then you can just click on the 'tag' link of the next entry above it that you want to add the same tag to, and the popup should move up without needing to close and re-open, with the right tag pre-selected. This saves a lot of time because the whole process to tag one book is reduced to 1. Click on 'tag' and 2. Hit enter.

It doesn't work going from top to bottom in my browser because the tagging popup appears underneath the add-tags link, and it obscures the next link down in the list.

[pierydys]

Ah, cool! That'll actually help a ton. The librarian in me is getting all excited. Hee.

[cimorene]

Yeah, I've had to set myself some limits or I'd just start and never stop: one shelf a day max, with breaks for other books by that author I like but don't own copies of allowed. ;)