My Bookshelf Is Now Online

I really enjoy browsing other people's bookshelves. If you invite me over, and your bookcases are somewhere public, I'll ask to look through them. You can learn a lot about someone by what they keep on their shelves. You can also get people to tell you a lot about themselves by talking about what's on their bookshelves. And you can learn about books, and find new ones, which is always good.

If you like this kind of thing, you may be interested to know that you can now find my entire library online. Browse as much (or as little) as you like, find out what I'm reading, see my reviews, and ask me questions. 

If you like this idea for yourself, and wonder how I did it, I used Shelfari. Shelfari is a free, community-edited book cataloging/sharing website. It's free, with no limit on how many books you can add. Other attractive features include a clean, easy-to-use interface, community-orientation, attractive bookshelf to display your books, tracking for when you read, or reread, books, and loaned book tracking. 

Shelfari isn't perfect. Perhaps most glaring is the inability to directly search your collection, although there are lots of ways to find or sort your books. At this time some books, or specific editions, don't have cover pictures but display a default blue front. Currently there is no way to upload your own covers. You will also find more rare books will be missing a lot of information, because most of the information comes from users. 

Overall Shelfari is a wonderful website for book-lovers, and comes at a price that can't be beat. I recommend it for anyone who wants to organize or share their library. Using Shelfari has been an enjoyable experience, and has helped me to rediscover my library and find new books. So come take a look.