*** MESSAGE BOARD

Here's the place for all those posts you want your fellow Club Readers to know about!

I haven't seen many Club Read members around on LT's new feature: LISTS.

It looks pretty cool to me, and I think we could have a lot of fun with that. For example:

* Vote for group reads
* Create & Rate group reads
* Many of members' statistics (e.g. year favorites)

* Books read per group

Go check it out!

I guess I'm not much of a list person, but this is great for those who are. I think the Lists feature has been around for a while, but it's just been added to the Home Page stuff.

It's technically been around, but it was very incomplete. Tim has been doing a lot of work on it of late and has made lots of improvements and added functionality to it.

I dare not look I am s succour for a good list

I used to like lists, but less so these days -- however since reading here I have been scanning them, added to a couple....but mostly spent my time trying to work out how they work (and maybe dimly wondering - why? - behind it all) I can't find any overview about them and netiquette type stuff. It had occurred to me to make a thread somewhere with all my librarything logged reading on one thread, for easy perusal and now it seems to me I can do this with one of these and make it only addable to by me - except this seems a bit against the community spirit, but hell, if they let you do it why not...

A list like Lois's CR recommendations from last year would make quite the resource and give new comers a feel for the kinds of books we as group read and find worthy enough for recommendation.

>6 tonikat: No, you can make a set list that no one can add to, that's one of the new functionalities that Tim just added. People will still be able to "vote" though which will shuffle the title order around a bit. If you go to the New Features group there's a couple recent threads with talk about them, should answer any questions you have (and if not, it's a good place to ask them).

Whether you want to experiment with that or not, you can always make your own private group for storing anything you want that isn't applicable to others and you don't really want random comments cluttering up. I'm not sure what specifically you're looking to do, or your purpose for it, but it seems like if just a list would suit your needs, that a collection or tag(s) would also potentially serve?

Thanks PM, yes just a list amalgamating my lists on various threads of what I've read, am half way through finishing it as we speak, little things! I have a group too, not played with that much though. You know some years I didn't even have a list or number my reading - I believe in that idea but its not good for quick reviewing, so impractical.

I've been keeping one since '09, but haven't been active on LT that whole time so not everything is entered here. But I use dreamwidth.org and just keep a post for each year that I update as I start/finish things, and each year I seem to add a smidge more info to it, haha (I'm now keeping track on it whether something is library or owned, for instance :P and have gone from simply # title-author dates, to the addition of pages, cumulative pages, and percentage of my annual goal of pages, hahaha). That way when I want a quick look to just see when I read something or to pick favorites, or whatever, it's a simple text list I can skim over easily.

I have been using the collections feature to keep track of the books I read each year; that is, I have collections named Read 2014, Read 2013, etc. And I use the Currently Reading collection to keep track of that. Is there something about Lists that would be better than doing it this way? (I also have a Hope to Read Soon collection that keeps growing, the virtual equivalent of my TBR shelves.)

It has never occurred to me to use a private group for personal information storage. Is that something LT management approves of? I can think of a number of uses such as keeping wishlists and checklists that I would access remotely from my phone when those unplanned book shopping opportunities occur.

I've been using Wiki pages (yet another tool) for information I want to share and some just for personal use. They look nice but take some time to compose. There's no way to make them private, but if you don't tell anyone about them no one knows they're there. And all edits are tracked, so that discourages mischief.

As for Lists themselves, I haven't explored that very much, but it would seem like a nice place for group projects.

Well, I was thinking we could have a list as a group, although I think Lists cannot restrict membership (?).

A group Club Read 2014 would for instance include all the books that all members of Club Read 2014 read in 2014, and that might reveal some interesting results.

To be honest, I dabbled quite a bit with lists yesterday and then found that it cost me an inordinate amount of time, and by the end of the day, regretfully, I hadn't read a page.

Steven, the only thing in TOS about groups is Do not create "pointless," "meaningless" or "random" groups. We give all groups the benefit of the doubt, but the creation of multiple, duplicative and contentless groups is against these terms. I do not believe a personal private group that you use legitimately (and for book purposes, though I don't think that book use has to be required) would be considered pointless, meaningless, or random. You could always nudge Tim/staff, though, if you were concerned about it.

Of course could have done same on Collections, I've not been keeping those up to date. Yes, I have found lists have used much time, but I did get reading done too. I shall have to make my group worthwhile then.

We've had discussions about e-readers and sources of free e-books going on a couple of different threads recently, so I've created a new thread devoted to "E-Books and E-Readers." It will include a master index to e-book sites you recommend.

http://www.librarything.com/topic/167106

>16 StevenTX:, great idea Steven!

>16 StevenTX: Excellent. I just came across Avaland's thread, read but did not comment.

New York Review Books is having a 50% off sale on 50 titles. Unfortunately for me, I already own so many NYRBs that I have all the ones I want that are part of the sale.

And now, NYRB is having a summer sale of up to 40% off on thematic groups of books, but I have the same problem I had in the post above, because I seem to already own one or more books in each package.

That reminds me, BN is having a 50% off Criterion Collection titles sale through July 28th. If any Club Read members also collect DVDs, Criterion does excellent transferring and subtitling, and they have a varied selection of titles.

Over in Reading Globally, I've started a thread asking for everyone's ideas on how to structure next year's theme reads. If you're interested in reading globally, please visit http://www.librarything.com/topic/182450 and make suggestions!

If you're interested in Reading Globally, please come on over to the thread for theme read ideas for 2015. There are some great ideas already there, but we could use as many as possible before I start a voting thread next week sometime.

The Reading Globally 2015 voting thread is OPEN. Please come over and vote if you're interested in joining us reading globally in 2015.

The results are IN for next year's Reading Globally theme reads.

If you're interested in joining us in 2015, go to this post in the voting thread to see them and/or to volunteer for leading a theme read.