Every bibliophile needs a good read (or even better, a great one), and have I got a great one for you! I take a few minutes to gush about one story I can’t get out of my head and heart, The Gold in These Hills, and the wonderful world of books otherwise known as GoodReads.
A Gush about a Good (more like GREAT) Read & GoodReads
I’m not going to go too much into The Gold in These Hills. That’s the book I gushed about, and you can read my review of it HERE for my double coppers on that sucker.
But GoodReads deserves a little bit of gushing, too. Because after years of underestimating the genius of it, I am a huge, raving fan. Yes, there are drawbacks. Can you say clunky interface? But with a few tips, you can get past that. So, without further ado, here are …
SEVEN reasons or ways to use GoodReads.
- Keep track of all those great books you hear about but can’t start reading today. Janey Sue mentions this great book by Kate Angelo. In the car on the way home (if you’re a phone person) or once you get home, you can add Driving Force to your “Want to Read” and forget about it–until you need a book. Then you go to that “shelf,” scroll through the covers, and voila! You see it, choose it, and buy it.
- FREE books. GoodReads always has tons of giveaways. I go through periodically and enter the ones I want. Oh, and do authors a favor! Share that giveaway! We appreciate that.
- “Update Progress.” For the longest time that made no sense. Why would I want to stop reading to share an update on my reading progress? Well, there are quite a few reasons! For example:
- I can comment on the things I really love or dislike on those comments, which gives me a mini-summary of my reading experience. I can cobble all of those together at the end and voila! A book review!
- If I have to put the book down for any reason, I can tell by my comments what was going on again and I don’t have to start over.
- It helps authors! No, really. Every comment you make gets put into your “feed.” Anyone following you sees those updates and may discover they want to read the book (or not!!!), too!
- Learn about other books. Seriously, I can’t tell you how many books I’ve learned about just because someone added them to their shelves.
- Reviews. Want to know if a book is your jam? Some GoodReads reviews even have spoilers if you’re really not sure how much vampireness you can stand from Dracula or if maybe you should just go read Anne of Green Gables like any other sane person (just joking!!!) Bonus points for helping authors!
- You can post like you can on Facebook. Ask for recommendations. Share a quote image (use HTML. HERE is where you can copy the code you need). Thank an author (seriously, I need to do this!). Whatever. If you’d post about it (book) FB, it can go here, too!
- Groups. Yep, like Facebook (see, it’s really Facebook for readers and readers only–no politics! Sorta… some books…), there are GoodReads groups! We even have a Christian Fiction group on GR that we’re trying to kick off the ground. Check that out HERE.
I mentioned maybe making an infographic with these things, remember?
Well, I found one online, and while it’s not exactly the same, since I don’t have all my tips and tricks here, I’m going to just leave this LINK and then make another post later if/when I ever get mine made. 😀
I am a *big* fan of Goodreads as you know and just got the book you started with
I can’t believe I ignored it for so long!