Last week I mentioned I’d been using Goodreads to track my reads and my thoughts on some of the books. Some of you said you liked my reviews, thanks! One of the things I wanted to ask in that post, and didn’t, is how you use Goodreads. I often feel like there’s a lot more potential I could be getting from the site that I’m not, because in the past I’ve focused on just tracking my books, and I feel a little overwhelmed about venturing outside my own library.

For instance, I know there are discussions that occur there, but are those only in group areas or are there non-group areas? And how do I track people’s reviews and get notified of them? By following? It appears that I have lots of friends, but am not following anyone. What does following do?

Also, what groups do you recommend? When I first joined Goodreads, I wanted to use it to track what I was reading. I moved “up” to adding mini-reviews when I felt moved to do so. It’s nice, because any time I’ve reviewed here on the blog, I’ve always felt like I need to have a lengthy, more detailed and formal review. On Goodreads, I can just slap a few thoughts down, mostly for myself but if someone else finds them useful, yay!

I guess what I’m looking for is to hear from some of you as to how you use Goodreads, other than just tracking your own reading. What are some of the best features of Goodreads, in your opinion, and what do you wish more people would take advantage of, that they might not know about?

As part of All Romance eBooks’ 28 Days of Heart campaign, I’ve been featured as the 12th of 28 romance bloggers. You can check out the interviews of all 28 here, or scroll to day 12 to read my interview!

Read on for more about the 28 Days of Heart Campaign:

In conjunction with our 28 Days of Heart Campaign to raise funds for, and awareness of, heart disease, All Romance is also taking the opportunity to shine a spotlight on some of the wonderful romance blogs that help make the eromance reading community thrive. Every day in February, our newsletter will be profiling some fantastic romance blogs that we know you’ll love as much as we do.

During the month of love, when everyone’s attention is focused on matters of the heart, All Romance eBooks (ARe) is helping to fight the number one killer of women, heart disease, with their 28 Days of Heart campaign.

Beginning February 1, 2010, ARe, the digital bookseller that owns All Romance (www.allromance.com) and OmniLit (www.omnilit.com), will release one new novella per day for twenty-eight consecutive days. All proceeds from the sale of these shorts, which will be offered exclusively on AllRomance.com and OmniLit.com as individual eBooks, will be donated to the American Heart Association.

The stories cover all the genres, from Gay to Interracial, Paranormal to Historical, Contemporary to Sci Fi. They were generously donated by both best selling and up-and- coming authors from some of your favorite publishers including Kensington, Berkley, Pocket, St. Martin’s Press, Ellora’s Cave, Cerridwen, Samhain, Total E Bound, Loose Id, Phaze, Liquid Silver, Torquere Press, Siren, Amber Quill and more!

The stories range between 10,000 and 20,000 words, so they are a perfect sweet (or more accurately spicy) Valentine treat. Each includes a forward by author Charlaine Harris (of True Blood fame) as a show of support for the charity the stories will benefit. Indulge yourself this year for Valentines Day—enjoy one of each, and know you are helping a worthy cause at the same time.

Though I haven’t been updating here about my reading, and actually took those widgets off my sidebar because they were populated by LibraryThing and I’ve been using Goodreads instead (link to my Goodreads account), I have been reading what I think is an impressive amount (for me). Considering that I’ve still been reading submissions, and that I’ve taken two trips in 2010 already (and I read very little when traveling), I’ve still managed to read 34 books to date in 2010.

As I said, I’ve been tracking my reads on Goodreads. I did a fairly decent job of it in 2009, but right around the time all of the upheavel happened in my professional life last fall, I also stopped updating Goodreads. However, since I read mostly digital, I was able to browse my Fictionwise, Kindle and Calibre records and fill in most of the gaps from September to December. When I was done, and knowing there were books missing because I hadn’t been diligant about keeping up my Goodreads records, I discovered I’d read at least 220 books in 2009.I was happy with not only that, but the variety of genres I’d read. I felt like I pushed myself last year to read a little more outside my comfort zones and I managed to do that. This year I’m also going to be specifically tracking the genres I read.

So what have I read so far in 2010? A lot of Charlaine Harris, apparently. Not the Sookie books, I’ve already read all of those several times, but I read the Lily Bard and Harper Connolly series. Neither of which I actually liked that much, but I found something oddly compelling about them. Weird when that happens. Also, true to form, I’ve read a lot of urban fantasy. Last fall I discovered Karen Chance’s Dorini Basarab series but had not read her Cassandra Palmer series, so I got to catch up on that these past few weeks. Also read Eileen Wilks’ and Nalini Singhs’ new books. Two of my favorite authors, and I loved these offerings.Oh, and I bought some Amanda Quick and Jayne Ann Krentz digital backlist titles from Fictionwise, so I’ve been indulging in those. I’m a little disappointed in the quality of the Amanda Quick books (they were obviously scanned from print and not proofread for scanning errors) but the stories remain good for me!

Now I’m patiently waiting for the next JD Robb book to release in 2 weeks. And the Patricia Briggs book in March. Another two of my favorite authors.

Right now I’m in between books (I was catching up on back episodes of Chuck last night). I have a significant list of books TBR but I can’t decide what to read. What are you reading?

I’m ready to load some new books on my Sony (really, I have 100s of unread books on there, but what does that matter?)

Here are the parameters:

It has to be from a digital publisher, not from a large press publisher. I want to support small presses this weekend.

Genre doesn’t matter.

Who’s got something amazing for me to read?

(and yes, I am alive. I’m just taking some time off from blogging. I’ll be back!)

Snuggle up with my Sony Reader and my copy of Bone Crossed by Patricia Briggs. Please hold all my calls as I will be unavailable until I finish.

Also, as a random aside, cocktail parties? Freak me out. I’m always afraid I’ll end up standing in the corner with no one to talk to for two hours. Very scary stuff.

Talk amongst yourselves. I’ll be back when I’m done.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Will the Next Kindle Cross Borders? (jkontherun.com)
• Booking Through Thursday: Electronic vs Paper (robaroundbooks.com)

Which do you use, if either? As I’ve said previously, I won’t use Shelfari so let’s leave them out of this convo. They lost me when they first started, with the terrible spamming of email.

I’ve been using LibraryThing widgets in my sidebar, I can’t remember why I decided to use them instead of Goodreads. I belong to both. At the time, maybe LT’s widgets were more customizable in some way.

But I’ve been noticing that Goodreads seems to have a more active community, and I have people “friending” me there, there are conversations I’ve watched and taken part in, and there just seems to be more recommending of and chatting about books there. So I’m wondering, before my book list gets too long on Library Thing (it’s only at about 75 books right now) if I should switch to using Goodreads for my books and my widgets, so I can take advantage of the recommend to friends feature, and the sense of community there.

Anyone have any thoughts on the two? I know KristieJ did a wonderful comparison post a few months ago, as did someone else (who was it?) ETA: Bookseller Chick Does anyone have an opinion on the ability of either LibraryThing or Goodreads to catalog ebooks and allow for adding of covers?

Also, as an aside, can I just say that Calibre rocks my world?

Via SciFiGuy

Eos is offering a free look at the first book in Lois McMaster Bujold’s Sharing Knife series. I’m a big fan of these books and highly recommend them to fantasy readers.

You can read the whole book by clicking on the browse inside image below. It doesn’t appear, unfortunately, that you can download it. But it’s a great opportunity to get a look at the series and see if you’d like it. The Sharing Knife, Volume Four: Horizon releases this month!

Browse Inside this book Get this for your site

J. Kaye is hosting a whole list of reading challenges for 2009 if you’re looking for one. You’ll need to take a peek at the right sidebar for the full list.

(and other random links)

If you’re interested at all in ebook technology and ebooks, you must go read this blog post by Kassia Kroszer at Booksquare. Kassia is another of those frighteningly intelligent and savvy people who intimidate me (I mentioned a few others here). This post made me want to kiss her square on the mouth, but instead I’ll wait and just buy her a drink in February when we meet up at the O’Reilly Tools of Change conference where we’re doing a panel together (more on that later).

JMC is looking for recommendations for sweet m/m romances. Samhain has some, but with the number of people who say they can’t find sweet m/m romances, it makes me wonder what we can do to make them more obvious.

Karen has information about a fundraiser for Sharon Cullars. More on her situation here.

Dear Author is giving away a Sony Reader. A red one! But there’s work involved, so don’t even follow the link if you’re one of those people who complained about contests that ask you to work for the prize. Not that I’m bitter

Smart Bitches are giving away 10 ARCs of their upcoming book, which I blogged about here. You could win one but the catch is that you have to promise to read it (not just enter to win it for the sake of winning). ‘

Keishon is hosting her TBR challenge again this year, and she makes it very easy to participate. This is the one I did last year and managed to stick with it!

And there was one more link that I wanted to share and I’ll be darned if I can think of it. I hate it when that happens! Do you have a link you want to share?

I have no idea how I’ve missed this blog/website before, but just in case any of you out there have also missed it, I’m passing it along. I stumbled along it thanks to Google Alerts.

You must check it out because it’s got some amazing resources including a monthly “newsletter” that lists paranormal/fantasy news and releases (lots and lots of great information here!), a page dedicated to upcoming release dates for different genres, and a series page that lists series in different genres as well as the first book in each series. The website owner writes in her latest newsletter that she welcomes any suggestions for additions to the series page.

Not only that, but she also lists different 2009 challenges, including one she’s hosting, reviews, interesting blog entries, weekly posts with that week’s releases and more! Go check it out.