LibraryThing

As Dr. Thursday so poetically put it, tactile books are much more delightful and desirable than electronic or other forms. But electronics can play a useful role in keeping track of one's tactile books, and so I'm experimenting with a new service called LibraryThing (see sidebar for my first ever "widget"). It's a rather inexpensive service that keeps track of the books you own and lets you share them with others (my book borrowing friends should love this! [grin]). Anyway, I'm finding that it's very easy to enter new books (you can also upload from various formats). I had started doing mine in Excel, but this is much better. I also like the fact that, as long as you opt out of book covers, the widget doesn't link to Amazon from your blog.

Caveats: Naturally, just because I own a book doesn't mean I recommend it and I certainly haven't read all of these books yet (this process is reminding me of how much more I'd like to read). Also bookcover pictures often don't represent reality, particularly since a great deal of our books were purchased used.