First of all, and I hate to admit this, although I do enjoy reading very much, it’s an escapist sport for me. Which means what, you may ask? Basically, I don’t want to think when I read. I do plenty of thinking when I read online, which is a huge portion of my day. So, with that being said, when I do choose something to read (bound and printed), it’s fluff pure and simple.

Romance is my preferred genre. Now, I do have a few authors who I enjoy reading, but beyond them, finding other books that I’d like to spend a few hours with and that I’ll enjoy can be difficult. Have you looked at the romance aisle in a bookstore lately? Too many choices. Given that, I thought the Suggester function of LibraryThing was great. I haven’t had a chance to check out any of the books that it suggested, but I did find myself spending FAR too much time using that great little feature.

The groups are something I plan on investigating further on my own. There are times, even though I’m primarily a “fluff” reader, that I’d like to see what others like me are interested in, but didn’t quite know where to turn.

The search feature was very robust. Having the ability to search for books in so many ways, especially since I don’t recall many of the names of authors who I have read, was wonderful. Since tags are used, I even attempted to search for themes that might be found in romance books and had success with that as well. I noted that they refer to using multiple tags in the search as a “tag mash.”

As far as the educational setting, I think the idea of participating in a book challenge would be fun, especially if students tied the book challenge to a blog where they reviewed the books they read and included LibraryThing Widget as well. As for other applications, I’m not sure, but I will enjoy reading the other blog posts on this topic to see what they thought.