Reading Challenges and LibraryThing
Just to take a quick breather from my reading list, I wanted to post about two more things which are taking up my time…
The first is LibraryThing – originally, being somewhat anal about recording things, I had catalogued all of my books using a pretty fabulous piece of software called Book Collector from collectorz.com. The reason I loved this was that I could just plug in my ISBN number and in most cases, all the details of my book would spring up from Amazon or any of the other sources I had identified, ready to be written to my database. I went through my whole collection, including those books too early for an ISBN, and was temporarily satisfied.
It was about that time that I discovered LibraryThing. I was in a second hand book shop and I couldn’t for the life of me remember whether I owned any Graham Greene, and if I did, which one. I remember thinking “if only I could log on to my catalogue from my mobile and check…” The long and short of it is I didn’t own any Graham Greene, so having missed out on a bargain, I hunted around for an online catalogue.
I haven’t looked back. Not only is it easy to transfer your database, but you have the added bonus of a strong community. I spend hours virtually wandering through the libraries, reviews, groups and comments of my fellow book addicts. I always knew that there were plenty of us out there – it was just nice to find a place where we could all congregate – no matter where we were in the world.
Reading Challenges
And then, after joining several groups, I discovered the fun of reading challenges! Although I had set myself challenges before, it is so much more fun when you aren’t doing it on your own. I immediately signed up for the 75 Book Challenge Group on LibraryThing – which means I need to read 75 books this year. I have been a bit slow so far, but hopefully I will catch up…considering some of my fellow readers are already 10 or 15 books in. I then discovered a whole lot of others in other parts of the web including
The Pulitzer Project – read all 81 winners of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
The Complete Booker – Read all 41 winners of the Man Booker Prize forFiction
The Triple 8 Challenge – Read 8 books from 8 categories over the year
This is just the start! Fortunately, you can read one book and have it count for more than one challenge, otherwise you wouldn’t do anything else but read.
So, despite the fact it is already February, I’m game…
I Love Library Thing! When I first discovered it I spent an entire day just cataloging my 400-book collection on there. Never regretted it!
@jeane me too! I spend hours on there reading reviews, updating tags, chatting with other bibliophiles and generally mooching. It’s nice to be surrounded by like minded addicts…