What's With Librarything?

Getting excited about our tour of Librarything I jumped the gun and made an account to take the "thing" for a test drive. I'm a big reader and an even bigger "list of books to read" collector. So Librarything will be just the ticket I thought. As with so many "things" in life, our ideas of how a "thing" will work and how it actually does (or doesn't) can wind up being very different.

Librarything is a rather clunky and unattractive site; not particularly easy to navigate or user friendly, though it is easy enough to sign up...ha ha ha!! Perhaps it's the fact that there is simply too much on each page, but I found it quite difficult to even focus on what I was trying to do.

I was hoping to add the complete series of Alexander Mccall Smith's "No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency" to my list of books I have read. Adding titles proved a challenge as each time I added a title going back to the list of books took me all the way back to the beginning. Many fans of this series already have difficulty keeping track of what order the books are to be read, nevermind the fact that this rather prolific writer has two other equally popular series from which to scan. So I quickly lost track of which book I had already added and which was to come next. This task was supposed to be fun, right?

Are there practical applications for Librarything? Very likely. I imagine it will be a fiction reader's dream come true when s/he is searching for the next author to read. I found a whole list of fiction that sounded interesting enough to check out even though I am not a huge fiction reader. People like my mom who cannot keep track of books she has read will likely find Librarything to be a great boon if she can figure out how to actually keep track of her books without going bonky.

As with most "things" I suppose the beginning is always the most challenging. Trying to navigate your way through different websites, different communities, or different countries all amount to the same thing...the more effort you put into figuring it out will reap more rewards. I will start using Librarything even if only to figure out how to use it. Perhaps it will be a cautious awareness that develops into a grand love affair.