There is nothing that could help me unwind than a thriller or a fiction with soft music playing in background. Every Sunday morning, I scan the Times for bestsellers and their reviews. But these reviews are not enough for me to order a copy from Crossroads as I prefer readers’ reviews to those of experts. So I had to depend on book forums or social networking sites. But not anymore; I can find what I am looking for at GoodReads!

GoodReads is a unique social networking site designed exclusively for bibliophiles. It helps you find a book to read or find the reviews of books you plan to read. All the reviews are written by readers like you and me, so it is easy to relate to them. Apart from adding friends on the website, I can also search my friends on their network.

GoodReads has a database of more than 2 million users and has around 54 million books on their shelf. Huh! that is a large number I must say! GoodReads was launched by Otis Chandelier in 2006 as an attempt to improve the process of learning and reading around the globe. At least this is how they put it in their mission statement. They have members from all over the world and all of them have their own profiles and book shelves.

Signing up is required to create a profile on GoodReads and involves a few easy steps. After you sign up, you are asked to choose your favorite books from an assorted list of books in different categories. Then you are led to your book shelf where you can add a review or rate books you have already read. You can also receive updates for the books you plan to read in the near future.

GoodReads has an identical interface like the popular social networking websites including users’ profiles, friends, updates, current readings and book shelf. Book shelf is an excellent feature of GoodReads where your favorite books, books you are reading or planning to read are displayed. You can also surf the book shelves of others to see the books they have read or are reading at the moment.

It allows you to interact with friends and leave comments or rate their books apart from reading the reviews on their book shelf. You can also follow people with similar interests or let others follow your profile. Ah! sounds similar to Twitter! You can find or invite friends from your Gmail, yahoo mail or even your social networking website accounts.

You can also join different book groups and receive updates when someone comments or rates a new book from your group. You can also join active discussions in the groups. You can also browse through the popular books, trivia, videos, writing, quotes, and events in the ‘explore’ section of the website. Books can be searched by ‘popular categories’, ‘genres’, or ‘bookshelves’. They can also be searched by date, title, author, popularity, or even the ISBN number of the book.

There is one section of this website I simply fell in love with—ebooks! The website has a huge collection of ebooks to download in different formats—PDF format, Amazon Kindle .mobi format and even the Sony reader format. When you download ebooks, you rarely get a description of books, but GoodReads not only gives book details but also offers readers’ reviews.

GoodReads has helped me read creditable reviews from readers’ and share my reviews on my favorite books apart from rating or commenting on them. I have downloaded a lot of my favorite books on my netbook and am really looking forward to enjoying my favorite books on the move.

Content syndicated from H2BM.