Last week we mentioned the new MyLibrary features over at Google Books, which are nice, but somewhat limited. In the post we wondered in passing if there was the equivalent of Flickr for books. I have previously tried LibraryThing and Shelfari, but neither managed to grab me. Then I stumbled across Goodreads.com, which is pretty close to what I was looking for.
Goodreads has the same basic set of features as other sites competing in this space, but it also has some nice details and additions that set it apart. Goodreads can search for books by author, title, or ISBN, there are sharing tools to keep your friends up to date, groups for meeting new people, a space for reviews or thoughts about what you've read and, of course, a requisite star rating system.
You can tag books as well, though Goodreads refers to these as shelves, which threw me off for a minute since other sites use that term somewhat differently
Some of the nice touches and small details that make Goodreads stand out from the pack include, the ability to specify the date when you read a book, the ability to pick specific editions of a book, a widget for marking books in Goodreads while you browse on Amazon, and, most importantly, an API for retrieving your data.
The layout of site is nicely done, not overly flashy, just functional and easy to navigate.
There's an RSS feed for each of your shelves (tags) with the default being the “read” shelf. There's a MySpace-capable Flash widget for showing off your books and Facebook application as well.
There are some additional features on Goodreads that go above and beyond simple cataloging. There's a discussions forum to talk about books and even space for posting your own writing if you're so inclined.
Goodreads also maintains a good bit of author information (you must have fifty books in your catalog before you're allowed to edit author information) and Goodreads founder Otis Chandler tells me that the site is in the discussion stages with BookTour.com about the possibility of adding more author information.
For instance, if an author you enjoy is giving a reading in your area, a mash-up of Goodreads and Booktour could make it easy to find out about such an event. That's just speculation though, so far no formal plans have been announced. (Disclosure: Chris Anderson, Editor In Chief of Wired Magazine, is one of the founders of BookTour.)
But what really sold me on Goodreads is that has an API which means I can grab my data and use it elsewhere. Regular readers will know that we don't particularly like services that don't provide total access to our data, but Goodreads has that covered. Sort of.
The Goodreads API is really just the RSS feeds slightly repurposed. There's options to link to books, search by title or add a review. When it comes to pulling data out, there are no formal methods — other than specifying a shelf — and no API key or other login credentials. There's also not much in the way of documentation, but after playing around with the various options on the Goodreads profile page I was able to identify a few methods like adding a per_page param (between 10-200) and various ordering options to control the results sent back. From a programmer's perspective the XML of an RSS feed isn't the best thing to work with, but in this case I can cope since it's the only option I've found.
Goodreads is looking to expand its API too, so if you have suggestions head over and let them know.
Goodreads isn't perfect by any means — its search features can't compete with Google Books for instance — but it's pretty close to what I was looking for, and I prefer it to both LibraryThing and Shelfari.
