If you love books then check out these two FREE services. Goodreads is a book recommendation engine that provides reviews created by by fellow readers, and can also connect you with your book-loving Facebook friends, enabling you to browse what they are reading and check out their opinion(s).
Findings, on the other hand, enables you to instantly share highlights from any book or site you are reading on a Kindle/Kindle app or anywhere on the web with the Findings community (see screenshot top left).
1. Goodreads
Once you sign up, you will be required to enter a number of books you’ve read and to rate them, which is actually a very fun process. Next, connect to Facebook, and you will be able to see the books that all of your friends who use Goodreads are reading, etc.
Goodreads vs. Amazon: this is why you may want to use Goodreads as a recommendation engine, instead of Amazon:
(1) Because you tell Goodreads what you like, rather than using your purchase history. This means that the books that your wife bought, or those you bought as Christmas presents (e.g. that book on country music you bought your crazy Republican-voting uncle) will not be a factor.
(2) Because you can see what your friends thought of the books being discussed, whose opinion you presumably are more interested in than that of random strangers
(3) It offers nice discussions on books (sometimes multiple discussion strands for each book).
2. Findings
If you’ve ever read something that you found inspiring or informative, and thought that others may also find it of value, then Findings is what you need.
Findings works in two ways:
(1) It can connect with your Amazon account, where it can access anything you have highlighted on any book you read on your Kindle (or Kindle app on iOS, Android, PC, etc). You can make any highlight public or private as you wish.
(2) You can highlight anything on the web via the ‘Findings’ bookmarklet.
Any other apps for book lovers that you like? Please share in the comments.
