A Really, Really Great Place on the Intarweb

I hate this kind of blog, but I'm going to write it nonetheless, for my loyal reader (you know who you are!). There's a website that nearly always makes me happy and feel very, very smart, and that's Library Thing. It's got everything going for it, especially a strong association with books-- your books, my books, everyone's books. There's a widget here on this blog (look down and to the right) that shows books from my library as they are cataloged at Library Thing. The idea is, they let you catalog all your books. Not CD's, not movies, not magazines. Basically it needs to have an ISBN number, and then you can enter it. You can enter 200 books for free, but any more than that and you have to pay. How much? How about $10.00 per year? Or even better, how about $25.00 for life?

It's not really a social site, though they let you set up a profile page, and you can leave people comments, and they can leave comments for you. You an look at other people's books, and they can look at your's. There are discussion forums, and lots of information, and everything is a link, and you can see how many people own the books you own, you can review books, and read the reviews of others, and get great recommendations based on what other people whose libraries are similar to yours are reading, and the people who run it have two great blogs, and basically you can spend as much time there as you could ever want, and find interesting stuff to read about and think about.

And I was thinking one of the things that makes it so great is the fact it's associated with books, one of the best things that people do. Read books, and write books, and buy books, and give books away, and read them to others, and think about them, and store them, and organize them, and study from them, and talk about them. A website about something as serious and good as books and libraries can't help being a good thing.

So, my dear reader, get thee hence to library thing and waste some fruitful time.