Goodreads

I'd like to say I hope everyone had a great holiday season. I haven't been around much because of my own revelries but now that it's done for another year, well, here I am.

I'm changing the pace a little this time. Some of you may have noticed that I'd begun writing about how I became a writer. I did this for two reasons:

1) Some of you may be interested in trying your hand at penning your own work and I thought I'd pass on any wisdom I've come across in the last couple of years. It's a shallow well yet but in time hopefully I'll have some useful nuggets for you.

2) The subtitle of my blog is 'A Writer's Journey'. Seemed to make sense to me that I actually mention something about my journey.

Today, I want to mention something just a little different. Goodreads.

I signed up some months ago but I didn't do very much with it. I was always too busy with other stuff to really give it a whole lot of attention. But, lately, I've been going more often and I have to say, it's not bad. No, it's not bad at all. In fact, I'd say it's one of the best resources a reader--or writer--can have at his or her disposal. Not only can you find any number of books that you may enjoy but there are a lot of authors and authors' groups that you can interact with.

Think Facebook, but for books. And without the eye-rollingly bad status updates.

So I've made an effort to create a more complete profile which you can see here. It still needs work--I'm still tinkering with it--but it's well worth the effort. It's a great place to discover new books, and readers interested in the same things you are.

Now, I know that, if you do happen to take a look at my profile, you'll notice I have a lot of books by very few authors. This part has, so far, been the most time consuming for me. I've read thousands of books in the past twenty five years and I'm trying to remember them. I'll never remember them all, and even of the ones I remember reading, I may not retain enough to remember whether or not I enjoyed them.

It'll look weird that I have suddenly read so many books but rest assured I have read everything I listed (just not, as Goodreads indicates so far, all in January).

Any down sides to Goodreads? One: sometimes navigation is a little confusing. But once you get the hang of it, you'll love it. I wholeheartedly recommend it to everyone.

A great site. If you love reading or if you're an author looking to have a closer rapport with your readers, I heartily urge you to check it out.