R.I.P. Visual Library, hello Goodreads?

Through facebook I discovered the application ‘Visual Library’ and I really did like it. You typed in a book name, and it showed up on your screen where you could not only click that you’ve read it, or owned it, but even find the particular cover of your addition.

I found it a handy and fun way to write a few thoughts down about what I thought about some of my reads, enjoyed the intelligent reviews shared by other members, and liked being able to see a visual, facebook list of the books on my shelf (or ones that I’ve read but gave away).

Lately, I’ve found it a bit of a shock to realize that the old idea that what’s on the internet is there forever is just not true. In transferring over material from the old website to the new website, I saw how many websites (and companies/newspapers/organisations) had been shut down – and that it’s lucky I saved my book reviews in Word files (at the time I was wondering if I was being too anal retentive). But no, websites disappear, along with what’s on them!

So, it was an unhappy surprise to find out that Visual Bookshelf had been shut down – that they’d somehow given everyone a month or two warning (possibly, I would have turned off receiving news and notifications from them).

Information, feelings, thoughts – all are fleeting. I’ll try not to be too mournful but if I could have, I would have scanned the many reviews and possibly copied over a few here and there to this website. The major book reviews that I’ve done are here on the website, but there are shorter ones that I missed.

Oh well. And do I now give Goodreads a try? I can’t remember the exact reason why I didn’t try it before (possibly because I’m loyal – i.e. I am not bothering with Google Plus unless they somehow prove to be better than facebook, or extraordinarily useful to my life in some way!). In the meantime, I guess I’ll try to write more substantial thoughts on the books I review – if they’re going to go up on this blog.

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