Good Reasons for Goodreads

Studying literature in the digital age means integrating social media with one's reading life. Nowhere is this better evident than on Goodreads, the social networking site based on reading and books.

I've been active on Goodreads since 2008, and as I explained to my students today, this has been a significant benefit to me. Not only has it given breadth and depth to my literary life, but it has also deepened friendships and given me fresh reasons to discover and explore good books.

I'd like to explain in brief some key features of Goodreads and then invite you to begin participating in this literary social network.


My Books - Virtual Bookshelves
The core of Goodreads is a set of virtual bookshelves where you can list, rate, and review any books that you have read, are currently reading, or simply wish to read. Each book you add must go onto one of three default bookshelves (read, currently-reading, and to-read). After that, you can make as many shelves as you like and put the same title on multiple shelves.

The My Books feature is a literary curation tool, making it simple (and fun) to take stock of the books that are part of your life. You can also see stats on how many books or how many pages you have read from year to year. It becomes, over time, a kind of biography (at least for those for whom books have been an active part of their life).

I want my students to fill up their virtual bookshelves with 10-20 books, including both books they have read and some they would like to read. Along the way, I'd like them to use the star-rating system. Later, I will ask them to write some reviews.

Reviews
Book reviews are a key part of Goodreads: both those that you read and those that you write. We start to see the value of the social part of Goodreads when considering reviews. For example, after I was given a huge hardcover copy of Neal Stephenson's novel, Anathem, I was unsure about whether to read it. When I click on the profile for that book on Goodreads, it gives me a summary, a compilation of ratings (not bad: 4.16/5 from 34,000 ratings and 3300 reader reviews), and even a way to preview an excerpt of the book. But what I often look to first are the reviews that follow below.

Reviews are organized by Friend Reviews, followed by Community Reviews. It is immediately apparent how much the opinions matter of people you trust. It's also very interesting to see the data when reviews add up from the larger community. When 412 people have liked a one-star review, I do pay attention to the misgivings expressed there.

The reviews that you write are also very important. For yourself, reviews become a kind of journal. Over time they tell quite a story about what and how you read, something that is likely to be of worth to you and those close to you. But writing reviews for Goodreads also serves a very present purpose: your ideas get compiled with others and will guide others' decisions on what and how they read (through the Community Reviews feature). But perhaps more importantly, your friends will see your reviews either in their newsfeed on Goodreads, or else when you share your Goodreads review elsewhere.

For example, I reviewed one of my favorite books from childhood, Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth. Like other online content, once I've finished my review I'm able to share this in different ways: on Facebook, on Google+, and in a blog:

And you can see this work. I'll use that very embed code pictured above to place my review of that book right here in this blog post:

The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton JusterMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
This was a formative book for me from my childhood and has been one that I've relished reading to and passing along to my own children. It hits high marks in providing a provocative and creative fantasy world that leads children to take delight in language and numbers. In addition, the illustrations are very engaging. It's no wonder this is a classic in its genre.

View all my reviews

It is also possible to create a Goodreads widget by which one can share any specific personal bookshelf on one's blog.

Later I will assign my students to write and share their reviews on Goodreads and beyond. For now, I want them to pay attention to reader reviews as they browse books on Goodreads. Of course, those reviews will be much more interesting when they begin to friend people on this literary network.

Friends
One can friend people on Goodreads similar to the way one does so on Facebook. Anyone can follow someone else's reviews, but if you want to have interaction you have to request or approve a friend relationship. Once you do so, you will see friends' book activity on your Goodreads newsfeed: when someone rates or reviews something, or adds a title to their to-read shelf. This allows for some interacting. As on Facebook, one can "like," something. This gives another chance for interaction, and for getting or receiving social proof on one's own activities, reviews, or on the books one is reading.

When considering friend requests, or when considering whether to friend someone, Goodreads provides a "compare books" feature. This automatically lines up your books with those of the person who has requested to be your friend to whom you're considering friending. This is a kind of literary compatibility test.

 In this case, someone I don't know asked to be my friend. I wasn't sure. So I clicked on the "compare books" feature. This brought up a list that showed how many books we have in common and how close our ratings our among those books we do have in common:

This gives me a good basis for deciding whether or not we would do one another good by being friends. I don't want to be friends with someone that I share no interests with, or who rates books I love as trash or the inverse. On the other hand, even if I don't know someone, if it turns out we share many books or ratings, then we are likely to bring interesting books to light by way of our reviews and other Goodreads activities.

Finding Friends

There are several ways of discovering new friends on Goodreads. First, there is a Find Friends feature that allows you to import contacts from Gmail, or friends from Facebook, Twitter, or friends-of-existing-Goodreads friends. You can also just search for people by email address. One nice feature is a challenge question. Mine is "I don't mind you friending me, but please remind me how I know you":

One can also find friends on Goodreads via reviews. When browsing books and checking out reviews of these from the community, I have sometimes found some very incisive reviews that make me think, "Hey, this person thinks like I do!" Then, I click on that person's profile, use the "compare books" feature, and then sometimes extend a friend invitation in that way.

A third way to find friends on Goodreads is by way of groups. Groups can be bookclub groups, a tight circle of online friends, or classes from school. You can make your own group (I made a group called "Omega Men" for a men's science-fiction book club I tried to start). Or, you can find existing groups. Groups can have their own bookshelves and discussion boards (as well as polls, events, and media). Here's an example of a group I found and joined, "Reading the Classics":

This is a way of finding not just individual friends but small groups of people with whom you share interests. You can be as involved with these groups as you want. I haven't participated in the discussion boards with this group, for example, but I do enjoy getting the group notices about their monthly reading challenges, and it's exposed me to some great readers and books along the way.

I want my students to begin finding friends on Goodreads in the ways mentioned above. Each of them should join our class Goodreads group, "Analyzing Literature," and they should use some of the other ways mentioned above to find and friend several other people -- both friends they may already have outside of Goodreads, but also people they do not know but with whom they can have an appropriate, online literary friendship. (I would say 5-10 friends at least.) 

This may seem odd that I am making this social requirement of my students. Why should I have a say in their social lives? Well, that's a point. But consider the simple fact that literary study in the 21st century cannot be separated from social media. And while it is certainly possible to have a book life through mainstream networks like Facebook, a social medium dedicated to books will be an important laboratory for the current conditions of experiencing literature.

More on Goodreads

There is more to Goodreads than this, including Author pages and events, the use of lists, and integration with the Kindle device and with Amazon more generally. I'll save that for another day. 

For now, as mentioned above, I want my students to enter at least 20 books onto the virtual bookshelves of their Goodreads account, to browse books of interest, looking for new books to read (putting these on the to-read bookshelf at least) and new friends to make based on reviews or comparing books. And finally, I want them to friend 5-10 people on Goodreads from among existing and as yet unknown friends. They should make a blog post documenting their efforts by Friday, January 9 as their second blog post.