Thing # 16 Library Thing

Library Thing is a site where "everyone can be a Librarian." In fact, when trying to link it, I kept reaching my own "lynkay" site rather than just plain Librarything.com. On this site one can connect with people who like to read the same books or types of books, comment on books, tag books, sort by books read/books owned/books wished for, interact with others, view author groups, and the list goes on of ways to "socialize" via cyberspace with book lovers.

I did join and create a library of books I have particularly enjoyed reading and tagged them. It seemed to give importance to my preferences to realize I can customize my own choices and that others can view my decisions about tags, relate to them or even be inspired to read them---or not. The Suggester was an Amazon.com books-type feature, although each time I tried this I got an error message. More interesting, was the Unsuggester, turning, "Other people who bought this book also bought . . ." on its head to "did you like . . . ? You will not like . . ."

Since I do not have a lot of time for reading for pleasure, it was astounding to me to see the great variety of books people enjoy. I conclude that many people are prolific readers and do not read just for professional requirements but find/take time to read what they want to for pleasure. I was envious. So many great titles, so little time.

This is way off topic in a way, but I liked scrolling at the bottom through the many interesting and creative names of people who joined Library Thing, located together on this part of the site 50 Books Challenge. The Zeitgeist feature (firehose meets mouth) is an amazing array of Top books, ratings, authors, collections, etc. It also was a hoot scanning all the interesting name of people populating these lists.

Library Thing is definitely not just a book thing. It's a whole huge library---a plethora of titles and book-related things-type thing. It's truly a fascinating Web 2.0 avenue for social networking.