Curation: Trying out Goodreads

First, just throwing this out there, someone should write something called "curation myths." Internet lists are all over that kind of thing, and that's a catchy title.

Okay now that that's out of the way, let's talk about curation tools. I'm going to be trying out Goodreads as a way of collecting useful books and useful writers for the topic I am going to be studying in depth this semester. I've never used Goodreads for that purpose before. When I have used it, it has been to catalogue my own personal collection of books, and to read reviews from friends. I am excited to use it as a way of looking outwardly instead of inwardly now.

I chose Goodreads over Amazon lists because I just like that Goodreads is not trying to get me spend money. I suppose Goodreads has monetary interests just like everybody else, but on the corporate corruption scale of Whole Foods to Goldman Sachs, they seem to me closer to first end of things, similar to Google maybe, or at least what Google aspires to be. (And apparently Amazon is buying Goodreads anyway?? I guess it's time to bow down to the Man regardless.)

A more relevant feature of this tool is the ability to make separate lists for subtopics, and make shelves. I also like the community of book readers on the site. One time, I even connected with the author of a book I reviewed on Goodreads on Twitter after he found my review.

Some limitations I am keeping in mind: I am worried that Goodreads does not have every book (of course, neither would Amazon or any other source, but the possibility to sell is certainly a motivation to have a robust catalogue). And I am also concerned about the limitation that it only has books, where it may be just as useful for me to find articles and essays, published in magazines instead of on their own.

One final thought about Goodreads: when I first learned about it, it was in another class with Dr. Burton, and I was surprised that nothing equivalent existed for film, which is the medium I prefer the most (hopefully that does not make me lose English major cred to prefer films to books). I wrote a post about that, and was happy that someone who was developing a site for that found my post and commented. His site has since launched, Seen That, as well as another, Letterboxd. I have used and been impressed by both of those, though I prefer Letterboxd so far.