In the post, I made the comment that I wished there was some way to “friend” each other or get updates on your friends’ shelves.  The founder of the site replied to my post, saying that it was in the works.

Well it is up and ready now!

The way that they’ve set up the social networking side is almost like Twitter.  You can follow and be followed and get automatic updates when the people you are following update their shelves. Very cool.

It also looks like they have a news feed a la Facebook.

Anyway. Come Follow Me!

If you comment here with your username, I’ll be sure to follow you too. This could be fun.

I know that since a lot of the books that have been released online, 1,000 sites with free books listed have popped up.  For me these have never been overly appealing because the sites are so cluttered and set up so poorly.

This morning, I stumbled upon ReadPrint.  The design is simple and sleek.  There are tons of books, stories, poems, and essays by a wide variety of authors.  The pages that contain the book chapters are very plain and there is very little to distract the eye.  You can see books listed by popularity or genre.  There is a brief overview of each author and each work.  It just functions well and looks great.

I’m impressed.

The idea is this:  In 1909, the president of Harvard said that everything that makes up a full liberal education could fit on a 5 foot shelf.  He went further, saying that by reading 15 minutes a day, a person could achieve this pretty quickly.  Someone called him out on this and told him to go ahead and list them then. He did. They became the “Harvard Classics”,  You can still find them as a collection, and they still offer a pretty complete, though dated, education.

This site, 5ft Shelf, makes that idea more modern.  The major change is that you get 2 1/2 feet for books and 2 1/2 feet combined for DVDs and albums.  On the front page of the site you see the collective shelf filled with books that members have added to their shelves.  By creating an account you can explore other people’s shelves and make your own.  It is so fun, and it was much harder than I thought it would be.

Also, the whole site is beautiful.

Because the shelf has to add up to five feet, I thought that it was cute that as you browse it shows how many inches a particular book or movie take up. So you start thinking, “I do like that book, but do I like it 3 inches worth? Hmm…”   My shelf isn’t complete, but I’ve really liked picking the first books, movies and albums to put on.

There are other areas too that are fun to browse and get ideas for new books to read.  People can put together “mini-shelves” which have themes- there is a historical fiction shelf, a romance shelf, a horror shelf… you get the idea.  The site also takes into consideration the books that have already been added to your shelf and puts together a recommendation page for you.  So far, I’ve found the recommendations to be pretty spot on.

My only complaint is that you get one shelf for books and one shelf for movies and cds.  Because they are so much thinner, you can put a lot more than you can fit books.  I’d rather they give me 5 ft and let me do with it what I please.

I also wish that there was a way to “friend” each other and comment on each other’s shelves, but it is a really  new site so maybe these things are in the works.

Go over there and check it out. Start your shelf. Look at mine.