I sat down last night and entered a bunch of books at random. If you use the author as your search keyword, it doesn’t take long to enter several books by the same author.
I wanted to play around with the export file before I put a lot of time into entering everything. It exports a nice CSV file.
We are either legion or pod people. You be the judge!
That’s what I did. But I ended up with some books on my shelf twice, because of all the different editions. When I added books, I didn’t take the time to look for the particular edition I read. So if I saw something on Eleanor’s list that I read but wasn’t my edition, I added it anyway. Otherwise the Compare feature wouldn’t work right.
I’ve been putting books read in a Word file for a few years, and I also went back and looked at my Amazon purchases.
What fun!
Okay, I have a fairly serious complaint.
I have a Yahoo e-mail account as my primary personal account. I registered at Goodreads and Goodreads sent out invites to join to every person in my address book, without my knowledge or permission.
This really pisses me off. Not everyone in my addy book is a good friend, or enjoys reading, or is someone I would recommend any website to. I had to send out a broadcast e-mail to the effect, “hey, hope you’re all well, just to let you know, I didn’t send you this. You may enjoy the website but this was sent without my permission.”
I do NOT enjoy being involuntarily made an advertiser for any website. I’m not mad enough to take my books and go home, since I do think the website is fun, and I’m definitely not mad at anyone in this thread, including jsgoddess. But anyone else thinking about signing should be aware that this is one of those “networking” sites that will access your addy book to spread the network and won’t ask you first.
So goodreads is partnered with Yahoo?
It’s nice to be able to enter the exact edition of the book you own, for your own records, but it does make it difficult to compare.
Okay, I found instructions to “combine editions”. Click on a book and then find “other editions” in the right-hand column, click edit, then “combine editions”. Maybe that will help, but it’s extra work when adding books.
And Jodi, that would make me mad too. Fortunately I don’t have anybody in the address book for the account I’m using. I can’t find anything on the Goodreads site where they warn you about this.
Jodi, it tried to do that with my gmail account, but there was a “skip this” screen, so I clicked the “hell no, what are you nuts?” button. Honestly, I would’ve missed it if I hadn’t entered a different address first and then thought WTF when it asked for a yahoo or gmail account.
That’s awful.
I’m sorry.
I had seen a place to enter my own gmail password and I tried it to see what it did. It brought up a huge list of people in my files, some of whom were members. I picked something like two people to get an invite.
But it definitely didn’t send something out without my permission.
And I didn’t have that “WTF” moment because the yahoo account was what I entered in the first place. Grr. But it doesn’t rate the “mad” smiley. Where’s the “mildly frosted” smiley?
ETA, gsgoddess, please don’t apologize! It’s not your fault and I’m still glad to be included. :
Happened to me too and I’m feeling pretty embarrassed right now. I did get three friends out of the deal, but still. As you said, not everyone in my address book is a close friend. No biggie though. I’ll get over it.
ETA: Oh, and I’m in the group. I’ve been having fun with the site so far!
I sent them a message about the issue, saying that there should be flashing lights and warnings about what invites are going out to whom. If I get a reply, I’ll share it here.
My apology stands, since this was my idea!
And a great idea it was!
I’ve been comparing, and so far I have the most total books in common with koeeoaddi – 45 – but the highest rating in common is 95% with jsgoddess, but only 4 books in common.
I need to figure out how to enter books from the TBR pile. Maybe when I see your high ratings, I’ll be motivated to read them.
See, this is why it’s a bad idea to have friends.
Also, a request: If you’re signed up at Goodreads with a different name than the one you use here, could you please tell us who you are in the Dope-iverse? Thanks!
Dang. I think I broke my bookshelves.
Now everything is showing up on my “read” shelf. Eek.
I joined as Dave Christopher. Sort of my real name. Sort of.
Okay, I don’t know if this will affect anyone but me, but it appears that if you create additional shelves, the books will be automatically entered onto your “read” shelf, too. To override that, it appears that the book has to be on your read shelf, your to-read shelf, or your currently-reading shelf.
This is only a problem for me because I have a “Steve” shelf where I was putting books I had seen that I thought my husband might like. These books have cooties and I do not want them getting mixed up with my books!
Before you ask, yes, I am that neurotic. 
I’m signed up as Valerie. I didn’t even think to use my SDMB username. Whoops.
If anyone gets duplicated friend requests from me, I apologize. I’m confusing myself.
Nice site! I just joined up, and hitched myself to the SDMB group. Please excuse my rather varied tastes in reading materials