The Sunday Salon: Just a Few Bookish Things on My Mind

Hello and Happy Sunday to you!  I just have some random thoughts I wanted to share today. Nothing great big, but I did want to share them with ya'll. First, you probably have heard that 'Goodreads is joining Amazon!' OK, I may be a little slow but...what the heck does that mean actually? Is Amazon slowly taking over the world or what?  Don't get me wrong, I am a fan and frequent user of this global giant but what are they going to do with my favorite reading/book site? I've read some bloggers complain that this is a game-changer and they're afraid our Goodreads reviews are going to be combined with Amazon's and shown on their site. I, personally wouldn't have a problem with that, however, I would prefer that to be a one-way street. Meaning, I don't particularly want Amazon's reviews to show up on Goodreads. I'm not trying to be a snob or anything but the people whose reviews and thoughts I trust are chosen by me to be my 'friend' and those are the reviews I care about. Boy, that really did sound kinda snobby, didn't it? Well, it is what it is.

The reason I decided to bring this up here today is this: After being away from my local library's website for a couple of months, I went on there this morning to request a couple books. Even though I live in the largest county in the state of Florida, we're typically not in the forefront of technology, but we do usually catch up. Anyway, after I pulled up the book I was interested in borrowing, I was surprised to notice there is now a thumbnail picture of the book beside the description. I thought, 'Wow, that's nice'. Then I continued scrolling down the page and noticed a section for 'Reader Ratings and Reviews'. This is also a new feature on the site. It has a bold disclaimer about Goodreads and shows the average rating and a button you can click to read other reviews. After the shock wore off, I decided that this was a positive step for our po-dunk county libray. I am actually really impressed that the PTB in charge of my library made such a positive step in making our site better.

That got me to thinking that maybe Goodreads joining Amazon might not be as horrible an idea as I first thought. I don't know when any changes are to be made but I'm confident that it will not affect my current list of 'friends' on Goodreads and my access to their reviews, so I am willing to wait and see how it turns out. Has anyone else heard any rumblings about this major change? If so, I'd sure love to know what  you know. I used to use LibraryThing but eventually made Goodreads my number one book site and I am hopeful that this will not completely screw up my Feng-shui.

With my depression over the loss of Google Reader in July finally subsiding, I don't think I can take anymore major changes to things I love. I still am very perplexed as to why Google has decided to do away with Reader, but I don't want to get all that started up again....

One last thing I wanted to mention is that I'd like to let those of you who may not know, that I have a page on Facebook for Southern Girl Reads. Many of my book-friends on FB have already 'Liked' my page and I want to say Thank You for that. If you are my Friend on FB but only want to see book related posts/reviews and don't really care what I'm making for supper or family stuff, you may want to make the change to my FB fan page. For those of you whom I am not Friends with on FB, I invite you to visit my page and 'Like' it if you so desire. I'd love to have you!

OK, well that's all I have today. I hope that if any of ya'll have information on the Amazon/Goodreads Thing,  you'll leave a comment so we can all know what you know! Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful week ahead in books!