Oh, sorry I didn't write earlier. I was social-networking. Yeah, you know, the whole Web 2.0 thing. Oh, on one of my sites; adding to my profile, adding friends, checking people out. Hunh, where? Facebook? MySpace? No, Goodreads.com.

When my friend Annie told me about Goodreads, I decided to check it out (uh oh, this sounds like an infomercial). You list books you like to read, with or without reviews, and then you connect with other people who like similar books, and you find out books you should read next. It's kind of like the evil, annoying but somewhat useful Amazon corporate trick: "People who bought this also bought" without you directly selling your soul for a good buy. That doesn't mean all my book reviews aren't being sent straight to corporate headquarters. Hmm...

When I first signed up it said, "Welcome! You have zero books and zero friends." I signed off, devastated, and went back to reading a real book. Tonight, however, I decided to poke around. I recently added a flurry of reviews and I wanted to go on and see if I could root up some good book recommendations.

After you add a book you like to "My Books" you can then see everyone else who has added it to their book lists. If you like what they have to say about it, you can then check out what other books they have on their list and what they've said about them. Pretty cool, except I spent an hour tonight searching goodreads when I should have been in bed already, reading a book (remember books?). The other problem is that I kept running into these spiritual self-help book cul-de-sacs with nothing I was really interested in.

However, I am still intrigued and will continue to push on. I see this as my chance to try out a mellower version of a social network to give me at least the tiniest insight into what these youngsters are up to today. I realize that this is nothing like the real insanity, but it's a start. You should check it out. We need you.

Posted by Evan Nichols on 1/14/08; 10:27:29 PM from the The Writer's Notebook dept.