Flights of Fantasy discussion

I've been puzzling over how to figure out what our favourite books in the group are for finding new authors and new books without having to trawl through long recommendation threads. I think I've got a reasonable solution. Without using a public list which has proven in the past to be open to a lot of abuse I think we can use a simple shelf to solve the problem.

If we all use a tag for our favourite sci-fi, fantasy, horror, ya, etc books we can then just use a handy little link to find out all of the fave books.

I did a little test with another member and we each created a shelf called fof-faves and then we shelved a few books and tada! We can get to here: Books Shelved as fof-faves.

I'm hopeful that it sorts by the number of times shelved, but I need more data to prove other functionality.

My plea to you is to create a shelf called fof-faves and put your favourite books from the kinds of books we discuss here on it. Sure, this might be open to abuse as well, but I think it is less likely. The other advantage is there is none of this you can only nominate n books. Put as many of your favourites there as you like.

Yes, I did think about subdividing into genres, but I figured I am open to other things if they are recommended and I know we all suffer from toomanyshelvesitis so one is all I am suggesting.

Does this seem like a stupid idea?

I think it sounds like a good idea, especially because it would be a great way to share those books that are really underrated and/or not well-known, without, like you said, the abuse that they have on public lists.

Great idea! I'm creating my shelf right now. :)

I added a bunch of fof-faves. Hopefully they'll show up soon.

When we did the test it took a little while, but it was pretty quick. I'm assuming the indexes on the database just need to rebuild to pick up the changes. Should be reasonably quick, but I'm not an insider on GoodReads' architecture.

Shelf Created. If these are populated the same as most of the things on the site, it can take up to 24 hours before we see any changes.

I don't see anything this morning. :(

"Patience, grasshopper."

I don't think any if us have hit 24 hours as yet. I know I haven't. *Fingers Crossed*

I see books! Lots of books! :)

Yay! I see the original group plus the ones I added. :)

No wait, those aren't all mine. It's updating the shelves and the "popular" items separately. But definitely progress.

A lot, if not all, of them are mine.

It's nice to see so many books there now and a few that even have more than one vote. :)

Fantastic idea! Creating shelf now.