Why did I want to read this?
August 31, 2015 10:29 AM Subscribe
Will LibraryThing allow me to maintain a list of books to read with comments about why I want to read them? Is there another book/media management site that will let me do that?
I like a lot of what GoodReads has to offer (and spent some not insignficant time cataloging/tagging within the application) but it's missing what seems like a fairly basic feature.
I often come across book recommendations that pique my interest, but given my reading queue and schedule, it's often months (or years!) between "hey, that looks interesting" and finally getting around to reading it.
I want to be able to add a book to a To Read list, with a reasonably detailed note about why I wanted to read it in the first place.
The solutions I've tried so far haven't really worked for me:
I'm willing to give LibraryThing a try, but I don't want to bother if it doesn't have this feature. Is there anything else I'm missing.
I like a lot of what GoodReads has to offer (and spent some not insignficant time cataloging/tagging within the application) but it's missing what seems like a fairly basic feature.
I often come across book recommendations that pique my interest, but given my reading queue and schedule, it's often months (or years!) between "hey, that looks interesting" and finally getting around to reading it.
I want to be able to add a book to a To Read list, with a reasonably detailed note about why I wanted to read it in the first place.
The solutions I've tried so far haven't really worked for me:
- Evernote: too freeform, no easy link to actually buy the book if I'm interested, doesn't export to luzme or the like so I can watch for sales, no link between initial comments to post-reading review
- Amazon Shopping List: easy to buy the book from the link, but comments are limited to ~200 characters, and again, not really linked to post-reading reviews (since I don't post reviews on Amazon because of [reasons]
I'm willing to give LibraryThing a try, but I don't want to bother if it doesn't have this feature. Is there anything else I'm missing.
For the books in your library there are 'comments' and 'private' comments sections, so you could use these. They don't seem to have a word limit. You can also set them to be displayed in the library view, so you don't have to click through for each book.
posted by ontheradio at 10:55 AM on August 31, 2015
posted by ontheradio at 10:55 AM on August 31, 2015
Yeah, I just put it as a comment on my own addition in good reads, for the same reason - was this recommended by a friend, on a list somewhere, referenced in another book, etc. I don't even bother making special lists.
posted by vunder at 10:56 AM on August 31, 2015
posted by vunder at 10:56 AM on August 31, 2015
Best answer: LIbraryThing allows custom collections, and has both public and private comments fields on items. You can also create a custom view that shows a list of books and their associated comments.
Once you've located the book that you want, you can use LibraryThing's Get This Book to search for it in local libraries, online bookstores (both paper and electronic), and book swap sites.
posted by zamboni at 11:45 AM on August 31, 2015
Once you've located the book that you want, you can use LibraryThing's Get This Book to search for it in local libraries, online bookstores (both paper and electronic), and book swap sites.
posted by zamboni at 11:45 AM on August 31, 2015
I also use the Private notes field in Goodreads.
posted by kidbritish at 2:04 PM on August 31, 2015
posted by kidbritish at 2:04 PM on August 31, 2015
"Wishlist" is one of the default collections available at LibraryThing. Users are allowed to create their own collections and ignore the defaults, though, so if you want more specific collections like "Horror Wishlist" or "History Wishlist" or whatever, you can do that. Individual collections can be set private or public.
In addition to the publically viewable comments and private comments fields mentioned upthread, they've also got a field for user-generated tags, if you want to organize your wishlist that way. They also have star ratings with no requirement on how the user utilizes them (they're strictly for your own reference), so if you wanted to assign star ratings to represent what priority an unread book is, you can do that.
Other requirements: Must be web/cloud based, should have some kind of "social" feature allowing sharing, should automagically get metadata/etc for the book and be prepopulated so that I don't have to go copy/paste a bunch of the book information by hand.
Yes, yes and yes.
The automagically populated data can also be edited after it's retrieved; if something's retrieved from, say, Amazon and they give the title as The Undying Scepter Of Borlag-Skon (The Kremiskilie Khronicles, Vol. 3) and you want it formatted as The Kremiskilie Khronicles, Vol. 3: The Undying Scepter Of Borlag-Skon, it's a simple manual edit.
posted by brianrobot at 12:31 PM on September 1, 2015 [1 favorite]
In addition to the publically viewable comments and private comments fields mentioned upthread, they've also got a field for user-generated tags, if you want to organize your wishlist that way. They also have star ratings with no requirement on how the user utilizes them (they're strictly for your own reference), so if you wanted to assign star ratings to represent what priority an unread book is, you can do that.
Other requirements: Must be web/cloud based, should have some kind of "social" feature allowing sharing, should automagically get metadata/etc for the book and be prepopulated so that I don't have to go copy/paste a bunch of the book information by hand.
Yes, yes and yes.
The automagically populated data can also be edited after it's retrieved; if something's retrieved from, say, Amazon and they give the title as The Undying Scepter Of Borlag-Skon (The Kremiskilie Khronicles, Vol. 3) and you want it formatted as The Kremiskilie Khronicles, Vol. 3: The Undying Scepter Of Borlag-Skon, it's a simple manual edit.
posted by brianrobot at 12:31 PM on September 1, 2015 [1 favorite]
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by Stacey at 10:41 AM on August 31, 2015 [3 favorites]