My impressions (plus discoveries and revelations!) of Goodreads – I’ve been a member for awhile, but mainly just to keep a list of books. I wasn’t at all proactive; in fact, Zeke White was my only friend, and that’s because he was kind enough to friend me J. So I definitely had some catching up to do in that department – I’m now up to eleven friends (score!)
Once I followed some of the recommendations, I was impressed with the different features, especially creating my own bookshelves (LOVE to organize information). I have used the genres feature, although I find I need to filter a lot of the titles (I used it when I was presenting on magical realism, for example – many of the titles recommended definitely did not fall within that genre)
Honestly, I will probably not utilize all the bells and whistles of the site. And although it’s nice to see what others are reading, it just tends to get overwhelming with the sheer amount of information. For me, the most useful thing will continue to be the lists and categories. I’ve been using my BCPL account to track books I want to read, but am trying to train myself to do this on Goodreads so I have everything in one place. Sometimes too I felt like I was doing a lot of backtracking / checking in two different places, especially for listopia. When I was voting on my books (I did the five books I most want to read this summer), I had to check to see if it was already on the list, then I had to do a general search and then go back to the main screen…but it may just be that I’m not yet familiar with all the details of the site. The recommends were a match probably about 50% of the time (in terms of what actually looked interesting to me). All in all, though, it was good to know what the site could do and how this could be a good tool for readers’ advisory – I think it will help with read-alikes and will help me easily recall titles now that I have my shelves.
Finally, is it just me, or is the site really slow? It seems no matter which computer or what time of day, everything takes a long time to load.
I recommended two titles to Zeke White:
Hi Zeke - thought you might like this one based on your interest in The 900 Days: The Siege of Leningrad, plus your general interest in Russia and Russian history. It got great reviews and contained so many personal accounts from people who lived through the siege (or didn't make it). Amazing research.
Leningrad: the epic siege of World War II, 1941-1944 by Anna Reid. Similar to The 900 Days, this book brings the history and tragedy of the Leningrad siege to life. It was just published in 2011 and is incredibly well-researched. I thought it was also interesting how she traced the Russian government’s changing attitude towards the siege – at first it was denial; later after Stalin’s death it was seen as a “noble starvation”; but only since the fall of the Soviet empire has the true horribleness of the situation come to light. I really learned a lot with this book.
Based on your interest in Soviet Baby Boomers: An Oral History of Russia’s Cold War Generation, plus your general interest in Russia and Russian history, I’d recommend the following:
Mountain of Crumbs by Elena Gorokhova. Similar to Soviet Baby Boomers, this is one woman’s recollection of growing up during the Cold War in Leningrad/St. Petersburg. It’s a memoir; she gives her impressions of what it was like day-to- day for herself and her family, and the pros (culture) and cons (government) of living in Russia during the Soviet era. One reviewer recommended it to anyone interested in Soviet history and the Cold War.
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