Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Wednesday Tech Tips: Booksharing with Riffle

I joined Goodreads for a nanosecond before I realized it was way too much to deal with.  But I still needed some way to keep track of all the stuff I want to read and recommend.*

Hunting around for a service that would not require me to rate and/or review all my books and would also not flood my inbox with crap, I found Riffle.  I've been using if for about a week now, and there are pros and cons.  Since it's a fairly new site, here's hoping they get around to ironing the bugs out.

The Good
Riffle is like Pinterest for books.  You sign up with your Facebook or Twitter account, and start listing favorites and making lists.  Your profile features questions which also allow you to list books, i.e. "Favorite books you read in high school" or "Books you'd like your soulmate to have read."

You can elect to follow other Rifflers based on the genres they're interested in, so I'm following the YA/SciFi/Graphic Novel types.

It is all very clean and simple and review-drama-free.

The Bad
THERE ISN'T A RECORD FOR EVERY BOOK.  Sometimes there is a listing but no jacket art.  Sometimes there is a listing AND jacket art, but it for the Spanish translation.  And sometimes, if it's a book that gone through several printings, the jacket art choice is just f...atrocious.  Yes, that's what I want to say.

There is a forum for posting your grievances and upvoting common complaints.  Hopefully someone on the other end is listening.

You can only sign up with your Facebook or Twitter account.  And as best I can tell, you can only comment with a Facebook account.  And I can't determine if you can message your fellow Rifflers.  So the social side of things is lacking a bit.  You can elect to tweet every list and recommendation you make, but frankly I find enabling the autopilot tweet obnoxious.  Do it with intent or shut up already.

The Verdict
I'm sticking with it, if only so's I can have a place to keep track of my must-reads.  Provided they have record I can tag.  I like the simplicity that allows me to get back to what I really want to do: read them books.



*(You can use your Minuteman library account to keep track of everything you've ever read and to create lists of what you'd like to read, about which, more later.  But it is an imperfect method -- about which, more later.)

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