Soob

Politics, Foreign Policy, Current Events and Occasional Outbursts Lacking Couth

Friday, October 03, 2008

Reading List Notebooks

So, I'm going to blatantly rip off Cosma Shalizi's notebooks structure, as it is brilliantly organised. I've tried Librarything. Works better than a lot of other book sharing sites; however, I can organise by tags, but I can't organise my books onto one page by theme with a couple of short notes. Couple that with books I want to read and Shalizi's notebooks layouts is the best I've seen. Mine will be a shoddy version of his, but hopefully it'll cater to some people here (perhaps it'll be a community reading list eventually?). 


Glenn Anderson also has the right idea: a bunch of interesting books with his thoughts on them, that are also similarly themed. Added bonus: get to add those books to our reading lists.  

So, feel free to add your own under themes, when you have them. I'll try update them from time to time (I'll also leave dates on when I update them, as Shalizi does). 

This will be the main page where I'll add reading list themes. 

First reading list theme: Failure.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have been deciding what is the best way to share a reading list, but my eclectic nature practically kills anything to make it a worthwhile comprehensiveness.

Ryan Holiday is making good headway by taking a different route. I like Cosma Shalizi list to an extent, but I do wish it was alphabetized, but my my he does put me to shame in the amount he has read.

If there was anyway to port my Amazon Wishlist it would be quite helpful, plus books you borrow from libraries and friends. There has to be a system that works better than what I've seen so far. I am excited to see what you list, my anti-library grew great deal from your first two themes.

A way to see the updates on each theme would help the observer too.

G said...

Hi Glenn, good comment.

I'll work out some visual way to denote new entries from old. It might have to be the case where I only update every month or something and colour the titles, as it'll get confusing adding different colours for each update. (maybe in bold or use html to highlight the title).

Or alternatively, I'll make the lists chronological, or reverse-chron, maybe with dates or something. I'll try it out next time I add stuff and see what works better.

Facebook has a software app that allows books reading, read, and want to read. However, it is kinda clunky from use (and again, doesn't really allow me to collate by theme or to add personal notes, just reviews).