Geeking out on Shelfari
Shelfari is a libraries application where you can put your books online. I’m not too much of a joiner and resisted Facebook and LinkedIn and such for a long time, but then I got about ten Shelfari invitations in the space of three days (three from people whose book choices I would actually be really interested in) and thought, That is some pretty good word of mouth.
I visited, and here is what swung me over: not only is it super easy to plug your book titles and favorite authors in, but Shelfari exports your list into an Excel file, categorising books by author, title, publisher, ISBN number, publication date, etc.!! I’ve been wanting to categorise my books, but there are just too many of them. This is amazing! I was so excited when I saw that excel file.
I registered, and then…I accidentally invited every person in my gmail address book! And that is a LOT of people. I have clients in foreign countries who prefer communicating by personal email than by my work email. How awkward. Now I know how I got invitations from people I barely even know. Shelfari, if you are reading: you need to fix how easy it is to do that accidentally! It wasn’t just me, either (ht: Alyssa).
I just exported a collection of book covers from my bookshelf to my sidebar. Here are some enduring favorites, the ones etched in my memory as wonderfully, delicately written, leaving sensibilities of their own that would recall themselves years later.
