Books, books, books

Picking up on my earlier post about the web increasing the amount and quality of my book reading I thought I would point to some of the tools I use to bring this about.

Firstly I use Delicious Library for the Mac to keep track of the books i actually have on my shelves at any time to help find them quickly and also to facilitate selling those I don't want to keep second hand at Amazon.

Secondly I use Librarything to keep a record of all books I have read, both good and bad, since starting to use the system. I also rate my books on Librarything and will some time use it to generate recommended reading lists etc. I can also see what friends are reading, read their reviews, connect with other people I don't know yet who are reading the book I am and all sorts of other wonderful web 2.0 goodness.

Lastly I have just started playing with bkkeepr, thanks to a comment from Adrian, which lets me keep track of where I am in my current book and add online notes through Twitter.

As a last note the "Current Reading" link on my RH sidebar links through to an Amazon associates link which means that if any of you click that link and buy the book I get a small percentage of the sale. This earns me enough to get a free book once a quarter or so.

I have reproduced my recent favourites below so feel free to click through, expand your reading, and fund mine at the same time!

Comments

[Benjamin]

Sound pointers there! Thank you. I'll have a good play with Delicious library. Are there any other good tools that use webcam barcode reading like that?

[Cheryl]

Your links have led me to many an enjoyable read - thanks ! I use LibraryThing and GoodReads myself. I will explore the others you mention.

[Steve Nimmons]

The bkkeepr service could become really interesting by providing forums for books where collective knowledge and criticism is amassed, per section, per page, per book. In other words community authored 'readers' notes'. It would be really interesting to see this develop into virtual book circles and guided eLearning / distance learning.

Of course this also adds (along with LibraryThing and others) literary-centric social networking. Mashups could be really interesting as well slicing and dicing the knowledge collected over time into additional value added services.

[Steve Nimmons]

This is worth a look with regard to Twitter. There is a Social Media 'pack' which is useful for listings, or simply checking out potentially interesting Twits!

http://twitterpacks.pbwiki.com/

[Euan Semple]

Thanks for the tip Steve

[Rachel]

I took a look at Delicious Library and love it, far the best I can find. Now I want to buy it and I can't, giventhey only take credit cards. Grrrr, annoying

[Euan Semple]

Really? That's frustrating.