Call of the Books

With the coming of the internet, book reading has taken a backseat. Most people, especially youngsters, end up spending more time navigating and exploring cyberdom, and for them, the internet has become the main source of information. Not surprisingly, this leaves little time for reading books, a habit fast disappearing in the youth.

Fortunately, there are many websites which are trying to instill the concept of book reading, one of which is Shelfari (you may have received invitations in your inbox to join the website). Even though, this website does not exactly promote reading habit per se, but it is a good source to indulge in the treasure trove of books and to hobnob with other book readers. The basic theme and structure of Shelfari is similar to a social networking website. The major difference is that unlike Orkut and Facebook, you get to interact specifically with book lovers from around the world.

The first thing to do when you log on to Shelfari is to create an account. This is a very simple process requiring your full name, e-mail address and a password. The next step is something which should best be skipped. At this stage, you will be asked to search for your friends who are already on Shelfari by entering your username and password for common e-mail accounts like hotmail, Yahoo! and Gmail. While one can try and search for friends this way, the fact remains that you never know when this information might be used to send repeated invitations to everyone in your contact list. The safer bet will be to invite people by entering individual e-mail addresses. Once you have created an account, you can start adding books to your bookshelf. All you need to do is to search for the book by its title, author and/or ISBN. When the relevant search results are displayed, choose and click. These books will then show up on your profile under various categories – books which you are currently reading, those that you have read, and those that you plan to read, etc.

Similar to Orkut which holds communities, Shelfari has Groups. These groups are again related to books and reading in some way. You can join groups related to authors and writing, book clubs, world literature and so on. The category of authors and writing carries groups for individual writers as well, so if you are a fan of Paulo Coelho or Jane Austen, you will find many like-minded individuals to interact with and discuss various authors and their literary works.

The main idea behind Shelfari is to create a global community where book lovers can come together, express their reading tastes and habits, learn more about the new books on the block which are worth reading and of course, interact with like-minded people from around the world. To spend time on this website and then go out to buy some of the books would definitely be classified as having the best of both the online and the offline worlds when it comes to leisure reading.

To meet book lovers from around the world, log on to: http://www.shelfari.com