An Unofficial Guide to Goodreads For Readers and Writers

From Cheryl's Writing Crate

I've always been one of those people who believes everything (good or bad) happens for a reason.  Just ask any of my 8 kids, and they will tell you wholeheartedly that their mother rarely misses an opportunity to tout this mantra.  Just this morning, in fact, I didn't blink an eye when my car battery died while waiting for my daughter to finish softball practice.  It was my own fault--sitting in a rainy parking lot outside the gym and turning off my car but forgetting to turn off the lights--all while leaving the key turned on so I could charge my dead cell phone.  An hour later my daughter got in the car after practice and that was when I discovered we weren't going anywhere.

Sure I was a tad frustrated with myself for having forgotten to turn the lights off, but there wasn't much I could do about it then so I turned to my daughter and said "I'm sure there's a reason this happened.  Maybe we would've been in a car accident if we had left right when you finished practice."   She knew enough not to question my line of thinking because at age 18, she's grown up listening to these rationalizations of mine, so she smiled and said "You're probably right, Mom."  (Smart girl!).

Within 1/2 hour we were up and running again after my oldest son drove down to the school gym and jumped my car.  I used that time to do some reading and my daughter actually took a quick nap--so we were both no worse for the wear.

This past week I've had 6 sick children.  It also happened to be school vacation week here in Rhode Island so I suppose you could look at it two ways:  1.  Poor kids--what a lousy way to spend school vacation week.  2.  Poor kids--but at least they didn't miss a week of school and get behind in their work.

Believe me, they were thinking the first reason, and after I struggled with a stomach virus myself for a couple of days I was thinking we needed a third way to look at it--SEND HELP--because when mom is down and out it's never a pretty sight for anyone in the family.

Because of our bout with the flu this past week, my beloved Thursday post never happened.  These were circumstances beyond my control so I really don't feel guilty or badly--especially because I am sure that even sickness happens for a reason (not always easy to buy into that one, but I still try.)

As proof to myself, however, that even this past week with an entire sick family must have some rhyme or reason to it, I discovered a wonderful new e-book that was written by an intern that works with me at Macmillan Publisher's.  The author is Nicole Dionisio and the name of her e-book is An Unofficial Guide to Goodreads for Readers and Writers.

Goodreads is like a personal assistant for all book lovers.  You simply sign up for free, and then submit what titles or genres you’ve enjoyed in the past, and they'll give you surprisingly insightful recommendations.  

Nicole's book shares the ins and outs of all that Goodreads has to offer.  I found so many wonderful tips from this e-book, and I think you will find it extremely helpful as well. If we hadn't been home sick, I wouldn't have had the opportunity to stumble upon this great resource so I'm considering this find one of my "silver linings" of the difficulties we faced last week with so many ill people in our house. I encourage you to click on the link above and maybe you'll realize that your reading my belated post happened for a good reason to you.

If you already know about Goodreads, do you feel this is a helpful tool with your reading and writing?