Good Reads

I often run across a friend who is reading something interesting or have one who asks me what I’ve read lately. Now, with Good Reads, we don’t have to ask. We can just load up this Web site and see what everyone’s been reading!

You can start navigating by clicking the Get Started button. All you need is a name, e-mail address and a password. Or, you can click the How It Works link and learn specifically what you can do here.

This site has a lot going on! You can rate books, keep track of your books, recommend books to friends, add books to your Web site, import/export books to a spreadsheet, create groups and even browse by different lists!

I have so many books, I don’t even want to try to catalogue them at this point in time. But at some point, it might come in handy to weed out the duplicate copies of books and send them off to other readers.

My Books �?This is your book shelf, where the books you rate and have read will be listed.

Friends �?This is where you will find your friends listed. This tab makes it incredibly easy to keep track of them and what they are reading.

Explore �?This is where you will find the most recent reviews of all the books on the site. If you’ve read the book, you can rate it by clicking the number of stars you would give it. Just below that, you’ll find the button to add it to your own books. You can also add a comment by clicking the Add a Comment link beneath the book's entry.

To change from the most recent view, you can use the Categories link at the top of the page. You can explore books through many lists and those are: popular shelves, popular, unpopular, friends popular, friends unpopular, friends reading, top authors, book discussions, stories and writing and quotes.

Meet People �?Here you will see a listing of the people who are: online now, top readers, top reviewers, near me and top profiles. This is the heartbeat of the community, where you can poke around and see what other people have been reading recently.

Authors �?Here you can see a listing of all the published authors who have signed up at Good Reads. It’s wonderful to know that authors read voraciously too and want to know what others have been reading as well.

Groups �?Here you can find different reading groups you can join and participate in. This is a great way to have a book of the month club experience from the comfort of your own home and at your own pace!

You can also search this site with the handy search engine at the top of the page. You can search by author or by a book's title.

If you are an avid reader, like me, I think you’ll find this site to be a real gem. I’ve got a huge list of books I want to read now that I never knew about before I found this site. Happy reading!

http://www.goodreads.com/

~ Amanda