Last night while getting my daily dose of Zenpundit, I came across his recent post recommending a new type of social networking site. It’s fairly similar to flickr but is aimed at serious readers. Thus, one creates his own bookshelf, and then adds friends with whom you can participate in discussions and easily recommend each other new titles.
Like others, I’m not done but my book shelf is here.
Zenpundits shelf is here and Dan’s shelf for tdaxp is here. I can only recommend this to our readers. Its still in beta and therefore there is room for improvement, but my only question is when it’ll be bought out and incorporated into Amazon or Google.
About Chirol
Sir Ignatius Valentine Chirol (1852 - 1929) was a journalist, prolific author, world historian, and British diplomat. He began his career as a foreign correspondent and later became editor of the London Times. After two decades as a journalist he joined Her Majesty's Foreign Ministry as a diplomat and was subsequently knighted for his distinguished service as a foreign affairs advisor. Additionally, he wrote a dozen books on foreign affairs including
The Far Eastern Question (1896),
Serbia and the Serbs (1914),
The End of the Ottoman Empire (1920) and
The Egyptian Problem (1921). He is generally credited with popularizing "Middle East" in reference to the Arabian Peninsula with his book
The Middle Eastern Question (1903).
"Chirol" is a US citizen and graduate student studying Defense and Strategic Studies and government contractor. As with the historical Chirol, he has traveled to over two dozen countries and lived abroad for many years. Chirol speaks English and German fluently with basic knowledge of manyl of others.
That sounds so cool. So I went ahead and made an account.
http://www.shelfari.com/Darin/shelf
But it doesn’t seem to support non-American books, and all I have are Japanese ones :(
On a related note, for Macintosh users, I have recently discovered a fantastic program for keeping track of my library. It is called Delicious Library, and has a feature by which I can use my Mac camera to scan all of my books in via barcodes (with a hand entry function for the old books). I had always been looking to organize and catalog my library, now a little over a thousand books, but the task of hand-entering them all was a bit daunting.
I don’t know whether it could be used in conjunction with Shelfari….
Hi Chirol-
I see you have a couple of Niall Ferguson’s books on your shelf, _Colossus_ and _Empire_. I just finished reading _War of the World_ which discusses the reasons for the incredibly bloody mayhem of the 20th century. The book is well-documented, and I learned a lot. He has new takes on the conventional wisdom. It’s worth looking at.
But be prepared for 654 pages, and another 110 pages of notes.
Chief: Indeed, and many more on my reading list. However, my big overland trip now consumes all my reading. Can’t wait to get around to War of the World!
“Its still in beta and therefore there is room for improvement, but my only question is when it’ll be bought out and incorporated into Amazon or Google”
You hit this on the money. I think if we were all really smart we’d be bending our energies toward making some kind of cool app, get bought out and spend the rest of our lives in leisurely scholarship and travel.
I’m trying to add more books each time I sit down at the keyboard.
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I’ve been using LibraryThing.
My library: http://www.librarything.com/catalog.php?view=Tangurena
Eep, textile chewed up my link, please remove closing paragraph tag and it should work.
Tangurena: Interesting, looks strangely similar. Hmmm.
OK, if anyone is interested…
http://www.shelfari.com/vonKaufman/shelf
Charlie:
You can use Delicious Library with Shelfari. Export your library as a text file (under the file menu) and import it thought the import feature on the ‘add books’ page for your Shelfari. There is actually a note about it on the ‘add books’ page.
Let us hope Curzon & Younghusband eventually join the network……….
It looks like a fantastic scheme to get people to buy books through Amazon.com via their referral code.
Very incomplete: http://www.shelfari.com/Yasha/shelf
bq. You hit this on the money. I think if we were all really smart we’d be bending our energies toward making some kind of cool app, get bought out and spend the rest of our lives in leisurely scholarship and travel.
Who says some of us aren’t?
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