THE Group for Authors! discussion

Having just set up a Giveaway, I look at the To Read shelves to try and understand who is adding my book and am surprised to see that some people have thousands of To Read books. I assume this is in some way related to giveaways. It does not make sense to me to have this many novels on a shelf.

Would it not be better for GR to limit To Read to say, 100 books because that's a realistic figure? I think it would also give the site activity a stimulus as people would work through their list more quickly if they knew they had to knock one book off the To Read shelf to be able to add another.

Just a thought.

The To read shelf is not related to giveaways in any respect except that if people can add it to their to read shelf or other shelf at the time of entering a giveway

Why should GR define what books I have my to read shelf, I choose what I want to read and expect to be able to shelf any number of books.

That said you will find a lot of people have multiple to read shelf since this is primarily a book cataloging site and they want to be able to shelve books anyway they want, in addition there are lots of people who refuse to use GR's to read shelf also

Paula wrote: "The To read shelf is not related to giveaways in any respect except that if people can add it to their to read shelf or other shelf at the time of entering a giveway

Why should GR define what book..."

Thanks for explaining that the To Read shelf has nothing to do with the Giveaways.

As for the rest of the comment, as with any well-managed site, there have to be limits as to what users can do. I don't see how it can be helpful to anyone to have thousands of books shelved as To Read. Do people actually go through a list that is say 10,000 books long?

You say that lots of people refuse to use the To Read shelf. So perhaps they also feel it can be made more useful.

It would be interesting to know what others think about this.

I agree that Goodreads should not define how you use the To Read List. Some people use as a digital Library, while others use it to keep track of what books they would like to read next. I use it for the latter and I'm at 7 but probably will bring it down to 2 or 3.

Hi Sandra, I am trying to understand why anyone would want to have a personal digital library of 10,000 books when there is the GR database.

Because of just that-personal. People pull from Goodreads to create their own databases so they can have their selection on their page. I have a personal physical library so I need not to go to an outside library to find a book (unless I really want to read something that I don't have).

I have nearly 400 books on my "to-read" list. I would be very unhappy to have it limited in any way. Those are the books that I have on my eReader that I have not read. I guess you could call me a book collector, I add a couple of new books to my collection every day (free books via Amazon mainly). If your books is on my "to-read" list that means I liked the look of it and it's only a matter of time before I get around to reading it, but it has some competition... I know my sister uses a similar system for her eReader. Personally, I never add a book to my to-read shelf that I am not interested it.

Some might consider that number to be impossible to go through, but I average 4 to 5 books a week. About 1/3 of the books I "collect" don't live up to the promise of the description (I read plenty of Indie type books and that is a hit or miss market). I also like to have a large range of genre's to read from - my taste is eclectic.

I created a "wish list" for books that I want to read but don't own yet and my Read shelf is for books I've read - I'm still catching up on reviewing these.

Thanks for your reply Sandra. I'd like to keep this discussion going for a little while longer, not to be perverse but because I still don't get it. Feel free to ignore me. I totally understand a To Read shelf of say around 100 books but I still don't get the 10,000.

If having such large personal libraries isn't taking up much disk space on the GR servers then perhaps it isn't an issue but I still think that even the people with 10,000 books on a To Read shelf would benefit from a smaller volume, one that can be worked with.

For someone relatively new to the site (me), when I see a list of 10,000 books on a To Read shelf, it gives a wrong impression that no-one cares about how the site is being used because that number of books feels excessive. I must be missing something.

Renuka - all of the shelves are lists, the books I have on my list aren't stored on the GR database.

Stacy wrote: "Renuka - all of the shelves are lists, the books I have on my list aren't stored on the GR database."

Thanks, Stacy. Can I ask if you would find it useful to have a GR To Read list of 10,000 books or would it be difficult to manage? 500 books would be about 2 years reading by your pace but that seems like a more useful number to me. It's partly about perception. I also believe that having a more manageable number of books on a To Read list would encourage people to read more. As always, it's just my opinion.

No, 10,000 is not a manageable number. None of my reading friends have more than I do on their lists... I've never seen one that long, either. My guess would be those people are the pack rats of the reading world... maybe TLC or whatever should do a show on them... lol

My to read shelf is books that I physically own but have not read. I have a I want shelf for books that I want in the future. I admit I may never actually read all the books on my to read shelf but at least I have a healthy choice to choose from.

I personally don't use the GR to read list due to the change of the wording on the button to "Want to read" which adds the books to the to read shelf and their are a number of people who think the same.

I don't want to read most books - I am thinking about reading them so I keep a shelf called thinking about - I may or may not read them, I may read them in 50 years time but I am thinking about reading them and when I am looking for my next read - I search my thinking about shelf and move to my tbr shelf once I own a copy. GR for me is a long term reading and I want to be able to as many books on my thinking about shelf as I want

Paula wrote: "I don't want to read most books - I am thinking about reading them so I keep a shelf called thinking about - I may or may not read them, I may read them in 50 years time but I am thinking about reading them and when I am looking for my next read ..."

The way Paula uses her Thinking About shelf is how I use the To Read shelf. Because I clicked on the Want to Read, and at the time I clicked on it, I was interested enough to want to read it. I may have to modify like Paula has done, because I haven't really gone back to the To Read shelf for ideas, yet...

I suppose we have to agree to disagree on this one. I still find 10,000 a lot but clearly others feel differently. Thanks anyway for taking the time to reply to my comments.

I only have 77 on my shelf.

I haven't seen 10,000 for anyone's to-read. Yes, that's ridiculous but who am I to judge? I've rarely seen anything longer than my own.

If this helps, though, with your question, here is my situation: My list had 2000 until I weeded it down to 1400 and it's back up to 1600 (my real life account--this is my pen name). I'm like Kristi in that if it sounds mildly interesting I'll add it. If someone recommends it, I'll add it because I don't want to seem rude.

I have about 40 shelves so my books are categorized well. I go through phases with genres. The genre I currently read has a LOT of short stories and the novels are usually short, too. So even though it looks like I have 500 to-read books in the genre, it's not full novels. That is the group from which I choose. That still sounds like a lot except I've only been reading this genre less than a year and I've read almost 350 in that time.

I probably have another 300 to-read SF books, 200 Urban Fantasy, 50 non-fiction, etc. If I'm in the mood to read a different genre I have a lot to choose from but it's not 1600. And I'm not currently adding to those shelves.

No, I'm never going to read all those, but there are books that were "maybe someday" that later were exactly what I wanted and became favorites. There are others that I was sure I wanted to read and a couple of years later I looked at them and thought, "um, no." My books also contain about 200 picture books which I can read ten and then read a regular book on a day I don't have anything else to do.

Some days I can't write that much, it's too exhausting, and I'm disabled so I don't have a job, so sometimes I have gobs of time. I do average at least a novel a day. It would only take me four years to read everything on my list (although that's not the intent) if they were all novels. It would probably take me about 2.75 years to read everything except the longest, densest books.

Hope that helps.

I agree with SH. I like to use the 'to read' list to remind me of all the books that I would like to read.

I may not read them all, but they are recorded somewhere! I also have a real life library at home, but it is much more jumbled.

I appreciate the freedom to pick and choose what to read, and when. As a writer, I'm also a reader. And I also have a slightly obsessional love of cataloguing and recording things.

Renuka wrote: "Thanks for your reply Sandra. I'd like to keep this discussion going for a little while longer, not to be perverse but because I still don't get it. Feel free to ignore me. I totally understand a T..."

Hi, I don't think you're missing something Renuka, I can't believe anyone would add 10,000 to their to read shelf. I joined GR this May and I just have 6 on my to read and of those I bought 2 of them just yesterday. I do love reading but I spend most of my time writing and gardening!! I love both.