Goodreads.com

In the online world of social networking, we are only as interesting as the things we're interested in. And there's no better way to showcase those interests than by making lists of them. In steps Goodreads, a web application that allows you to extensively catalog, and share with friends, every book you've ever read, plan to read, or, as Italo Calvino wrote: Books You Needn't Read, Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Also Read But Unfortunately Your Days Are Numbered, Books That Everybody's Read So It's As If You Had Read Them Too. The list goes on.

Founded in 2006 by one Otis Chandler, self-described software engineer, entrepreneur and voracious reader, Goodreads stands out from other so-called social cataloging applications (see: LibraryThing, Shelfari, to name a few) for its crisp design and easy navigability. Simply sign in and begin placing books on your "shelves."

First-time Goodreaders can collect books by searching by author, title or ISBN. Even easier: trawl through other readers' collections and rate (with up to five stars; one for "didn't like it," five for "it was amazing") the books from their list that you want in your own virtual collection. When you've amassed tens, hundreds or even 2,161 books, as one particularly avid Goodreader has, you can then toy around with categorizing your books on different "shelves." Start with the default "read," "currently reading" and "to read," and add, perhaps, "fiction" and "nonfiction" — or, better yet, get creative and elaborate with "books i discuss as if i've read," "booksi'vestartedbutdontplantofinish," "not read but hate" or your own inexplicable category, like "craphat."

Of course, as Linnaeus and Dewey can probably attest, categorizing breeds subcategorizing, which breeds obsessive compulsion. Add the exact edition of every book you can remember reading, and, when memory no longer serves, hark back to your young adult yarns (Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret). Go back further still to your childhood favorites (Roald Dahl is the common denominator of many Goodreaders' lists).

There are bugs to be worked out, of course. Goodreads itself admits that authors with the same name remain a challenge. Also, any user can manually add new books, which means errors (of which typos are the least egregious) can be introduced until a user with librarian status can go in and correct the entry. These seem to be small growing pains, though, and don't affect the addictiveness of the site (if your addiction is books).

When you've exhausted your memory — and the number beside your profile fulfills whatever competitive nature you may have — you can: write reviews of books you've read; read other Goodreaders' reviews and leave comments on them; discuss book-related topics (the latest: Cormac McCarthy on Oprah?!); compare your lists to your friends' to see how much you have — or don't have — in common; or see who else is online and how many miles they are away from you, all the while adding yet more titles to your "to read" shelf.

In other words: dwindle away hours and hours of your time.

Consider it time well spent, though, because Goodreads is more than just a method of cataloging and sharing the books you love and hate. If there's any truth to the wisdom of crowds, it's a way of finding your next five-star book.

— Lavina Lee (lavina at flakmag dot com) with contributions by Cindy Nowicki (nowickicynthia at yahoo dot com)