"Goodreads is approximately 7 bajillion times more awesome when your friends are using it too. We have proven this. With science."
That appeared on Goodreads' front page the other day encouraging people to invite their friends to join their site. Naturally, I encourage everyone to join Goodreads because Goodreads is, what is the word? Awesome. Frankly so.
This frankly awesome site is compromised of a huge database of books and every member uses that datebase of books to create their own library. They can put books on their "read" shelf, "to-read" shelf, "currently reading" shelf, and make themselves any other shelves they want ("historial fiction," "read in 2011," "vampires," etc.)
I have 400-something books on my shelves, I have been compiling them on Goodreads since sometime in about May of 2008. Most of those books (390-something) are on my "read" list which is, well, all the books I've read. All but two of the rest are on my to-read list. I admit that my to-read on Goodreads is very, very, very incomplete. I don't really like to add books to the to-read list on here because I feel like they just get lost in the masses and I never actually read them.
Anyways. The last two books are on my currently-reading shelf.
--Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
I have been working on this book since January 7th, according to Goodreads. It is slow going because it is very wordy but it is most seriously excellent. The saddest day ever happened a couple days ago, it was the day I had to return this book to the library. Thankfully nobody had put a request on it or anything. The idea that someone could have requested Les Mis makes that day not only the saddest but also the scariest.
--Hogfather by Terry Pratchett
I am about 140 pages into this and I am very sad that Death isn't in it much at all. This book would improve so much if Death got a little more spotlight. Seriously, Pratchett, what is your issue? I thought you were supposed to be a great author or something. Gah. Death's antics are far more amusing than his lame granddaughter person's and yet she is hogging the whole book. Can anyone else see something wrong here?
I accepted a challenge on Goodreads yesterday. A little thing showed up in the sidebar, "2011 Reading Challenge," I thought, Oh, this is a spiffy little icon and clicked. It's basically a self-challenged goal with Goodreads' help. I just entered how many books I wanted to read in 2011 and hit submit. So far I have read two books towards my lovely little goal of 100 books. The numbers people have entered are all over the place, they've got goals like 12 books, 1, 52, 300, etc. I just did a nice even hundred, I read 92 books in 2010 and didn't tackle Les Miserables so we shall see.
*updates profile* I did not realize how outdated that thing was! All better now.
The other thing that I love about Goodreads is their little quotes thing. It is great for people who loves quotes and people who just happen to always have a desire to save the memorable thing they run across while reading. Goodness me, if you love quote get a Goodreads account just for the quote tool! Skip the main program and go straight for the featurette.
I have 420-something quotes store on Goodreads. A whole collection of wisdom in small bits. Some of my collection, a small portion and then I will be done.
"Are you badly hurt?"
"Hideously," said the king, without sounding injured at all. "I am disemboweled. My insides may in an instant become my outsides as I stand here before you." -- Megan Whalen Turner, The King of Attolia
"The Calormens have dark faces and long beards. They wear flowing robes and orange-colored turbans, and they are a wise, wealthy, courteous, cruel and ancient people. They bowed most politely to Caspian and paid him long compliments all about the fountains of prosperity irrigating the gardens of prudence and virtue --and things like that-- but of course what they wanted was the money they had paid." -- C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
"Books to the ceiling,
Books to the sky,
My pile of books is a mile high.
How I love them! How I need them!
I'll have a long beard by the time I read them." -- Arnold Lobel
"Ruby Gillis thinks of nothing but young men, and the older she gets the worse she is. Young men are all very well in their place, but it doesn't do to drag them into everything, does it?" -- L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables
"I have wondered,' said the Marquis, taking a great bite out of a slice of bread and jam, 'whether it wouldn't be better for me to do it with a knife. Most of the best things have been brought off with a knife. And it would be a new emotion to get a knife into a French President and wriggle it around." -- G.K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday
"Mr. Pewter led them through to a library, filled with thousands of antiquarian books.
'Impressive, eh?'
'Very,' said Jack. 'How did you amass all these?'
'Well,' said Pewter, 'You know the person who always borrows books and never gives them back?'
'Yes...?'
'I'm that person." -- Jasper Fforde, The Big Over Easy
"My fingers,' said Elizabeth, 'do not move over this instrument in the masterly manner which I see so many woman's do. They have not the same force of rapidity and do not possess the same expression. But then I have always supposed it to be my own fault--because I would not take the trouble if practicing. It is not that I do not believe my fingers as capable as any other woman's of superior execution.'
Darcy smiled and said, 'You are perfectly right." -- Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
"It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt." -- Abraham Lincoln
So. Anyways. I think I will get back to my book now. It is a good book, after all.
1 comment:
I'll have to check it out! It sounds quite interesting.
Of all 92 books you read last year, what was your favorite?
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