Virtual Shelf

Around the end of last year, someone in my flist [kaoko] had talked about Shelfari. In her words, “it’s friendster for books” or I guess it would be more apt or hip or whatever to say now that it’s “it’s myspace for books”. It’s a virtual library, just not the kind that allows you to take down books from the shelves and start reading. So, I guess, the library reference fails. Think of it then as a bookstore display window. You can see, but you can’t touch.

As the same implies, you create a virtual shelf of books you have. You can view my (pitiful) shelf here.I’m sure a lot of people can find some use for the site if only to inventory their books (which is why I signed up for one, also why you’re likely to see my programming books sitting next to Jared Diamond’s or Neil Gaiman’s).

I like the interface of the site. It’s simple and clean. It’s also pretty basic, but, really, what more do you need. Adding ratings and opinions aren’t complicated. Searching for books is easy as well, although if you’re searching for an obscure edition for a highly popular book, you can get tons of hits and spend hours wading through the search results (like what happened when I tried looking for my 1974 Ballentine Books printing of The Return of the King). It can get frustrating. In my experience, searching using the ISBN number is still best. Although this is tricky in itself, as even searching by ISBN does not guarantee that you will get a search hit on the edition you’re looking for. It does get a little annoying when instead of a shiny book cover, you get the generic blue book icon with the title of the book in white.

If you’ve added enough books looking at your shelf can be quite … fulfilling since it looks so pretty with the book covers and all. But maybe that’s because I’m easily impressed.

What I don’t like about the site is the limited way you can sort the books (either by date, author, opinions, or ratings). My obsessive-compulsiveness demands that there should be a customizable way to sort the books. And since I’m using the site mainly for inventory purposes, I find the tags not very useful. It would be convenient to be able to add a note to a book on my personal shelf, for example if I want to remind myself to whom I’ve loaned it to. The site is still a work in progress, so I suppose they will think of other features.

What I also didn’t like about the site is that they don’t have enough Filipino books. I did find The Best Philippine Short Stories of the Twentieth Century, and amazingly, Pol Medina Jr’s Pugad Baboy, but no F.H. Batacan or Carlo Vergara’s Zsa Zsa Zaturnnah. They do have a lot of manga though. I suppose the fact that the site is tied up with Amazon.com has something to do with it. I did a search of the two books in Amazon and came up with nothing. There’s also no way to add a book, which I suppose makes sense. You can only add editions of a book that’s already in their website.

Still, it’s a fun and useful site. They get more and more groups set-up which I think is great since, HALLO, community of readers! What’s more fun that talking to people who have read books you have read? I also like the concept of a Reading List and a Wish List.

Can’t compare it to LibraryThing as I haven’t tried their site yet. Maybe someone will be inclined to try the site and post about it.

Having half-completed my shelf though, I noticed that I am somewhat narrow-minded when it comes to picking books. Looking at my shelf, I’d say about 85% are fantasy novels, 10% are textbooks, and the remaining 5% are non-fiction. I’ve been trying to branch out more and read from other genres. I have the tendency to read by author, however, and it’s usually because I like an author a lot that I eventually collect his books. So far I’ve read Anne Rice, J.K. Rowling, Douglas Adams, David and Leigh Eddings, John Grisham, Robin Cook, Paulo Coelho, Neil Gaiman (his novels, not Sandman yet), Dan Brown, Tolkien, and … I can’t remember who else. Of course I haven’t read all their books, but I’ve read either a series, or most of their books up until the time I switched to a different author. So, I guess that kind of explains why I stick to a genre. Right now, I suppose it’s a matter for finding another author to read, although judging by my recent purchases, I haven’t found one yet. Mostly because the authors I do find interesting are very prolific (Stephen King, Raymond Feist, R.A. Salvatore, Terry Pratchett, again still in the Fantasy genre I know, except maybe Stephen King) and collecting their books is going to be a monumental task which my current financial resources can not cope with (having just used up 60% of yesterday’s paycheck to pay for my credit card bill because I just had to collect all eleven volumes of Mike Carrey’s Lucifer last month as a belated birthday treat).

But hey, I’m always open to suggestions. The only exception being Historical Romance, I read whatever anyone recommends really. It’s the getting the book part that’s a bit problematic. But feh, logistics.

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August 15, 2007 Written by: lethologica | Filed Under Reviews

Comments

2 Responses to “Virtual Shelf”

Danny on August 15th, 2007 4:53 pm

Wow! What a great analysis of Shelfari. I am also a Shelfarian can’t get enough of the site. I found that when i am having trouble looking for a book, I click on “Search Amazon” at the bottom of the page and usually find my book right away.
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