Appease Your Book Collecting Urges With Shelfari

Posted: January 18th, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: web | 3 Comments »

Whether you’re shedding your belongings so you can travel like I am, or you simply want less clutter, Shelfari is an online book collection site that can help you get on with your life. Most folks seem to hoard books, and have plenty of remorse when the time comes to get rid of them. Shelfari is my favourite site for keeping a surrogate hoard online rather than on huge shelves at home.

The main benefit I get from seeing my books on a shelf is triggered memories. I have a hard time remembering what I’ve read in the past. Or more importantly, what ideas I gained from reading a particular book. Periodically seeing them on a shelf triggers my memory of why that book was interesting and keeps the idea alive in my little mind. I suppose, “out of sight, out of mind” is the cliche that applies in this case. While traveling I’m also keen to ditch heavy books once I’ve read them so I can free up bag space for the essentials. Such as pastries. Shelfari is perfect for letting me get rid of the physical books without losing the memory of what I read.

There’s also all the expected social sharing tools in Shelfari. Such as ratings, reviews, discussion groups, friends, recommendations, and so on. A lot of community features that once you get used to them really add value to the enjoyment of reading. There seems to be a group of folks discussing just about every author and genre that exist.

If you are a Shelfari member, or you decide to sign up, definitely add me to your friends list so we can stalk each others questionable literacy.

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// shawn

photo credit here

3 Comments on “Appease Your Book Collecting Urges With Shelfari”

  1. 1: Candice said at 09:35 on January 19th, 2010:

    Effff, I wrote a book swapping piece for Matador today, wish I had known this earlier. Bookmooch (bookmooch.com) is an amazing tool as well, might wanna check that one out!

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  2. 2: Nomadic Chick said at 15:36 on January 19th, 2010:

    Ha, you’re such a famewhore, always wanting people to add you. :) Isn’t Shelfari on a Mac OS platform…? Ooh, I”m certain my gf showed it to me on her iphone. Me want iphone.

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    Shawn Reply:
    January 20th, 2010 at 20:38

    Ha, shush :) Sites like shelfari and foursquare are much more fun if plenty of people use them also. That’s why I say that.

    Shelfari is just a website, so you can use it on any computer. There’s facebook apps and maybe iphone apps – I’ll have to look and see for the iphone.

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