Find the Next Good Book with Social Site Goodreads

Image taken from flickr. Photograph by Stewart Butterfield.

Looking for the next good book to read? There are so many books out there, sometimes it can be a pain finding the "right" one.  Even a book that is "objectively" good, or considered to be good by the critics or by the majority, might not be a book that you personally are interested in reading. The social site Goodreads keeps the personal factor in mind by giving users the opportunity to see what their friends are reading.

Goodreads provides recommendations based on books you've liked in the past.  You can rate books you've read, and their algorithm will bring up a list of similar books. You can also build a queue for yourself by adding books to your "to read" list and update your status with a "currently reading" list, where you can even keep track of the progress you've made on that book (or books, if you read more than one at a time).

Of course, that's just part of Goodreads. As I mentioned, it's a social site. It allows you to connect with your friends to compare what you've read. You can review and recommend books, and you can ask for recommendations from others.  When you compare your library to a friend's, a section at the bottom allows you to view other books your friend has read that are not in your library. When you're looking at a book, the site will automatically show your friends' reviews first.  You can also form book clubs.

Sadly there is one aspect of the site that sounded teasingly exciting, but was ultimately discontinued last fall: Book Swap.  Under this now-defunct section, you could list the books that you own, and then, if you wanted, you could also mark them as "want to swap." Through this interface, users could exchange books. It sounded like a really promising feature, so I was disappointed to learn that it was discontinued.

I only just started using Goodreads last night, so I haven't had a chance to fully explore everything yet. That said, I'm obviously really excited about it and eager to see how well it performs in recommending good books. Also, you should friend me so I can expand my network!