Wednesday, 10:00

So, I, uh, made a Goodreads account? Not because I want it to replace my Delicious Library database¹, or LJ as the place I post reviews, but A) so I can easily find reviews of individual books without digging through my "pimping" tag² and B) Goodreads has an iphone app, which means I'll have a searchable database I can carry around with me at all times. (Apparently Delicious Library had an iphone app for like five minutes, until Amazon told them they needed to kill it or they would be blocked from mining Amazon's data.)

It does have its problems, the biggest one being how messed up some of the title and author data is for Japanese books (which is everything for me, since I haven't put any English language books in). Like, if I'm searching for "Lovely Sick," for example, and I enter the title in Japanese, volume two won't show up, because that volume is only listed under the English title. I mean, it's annoying to have stuff like the publisher information in the title field, but at least that doesn't hinder my efforts to find books. I'm debating applying for "librarian" status, since you need that to change information that will affect the global database. (Otherwise some of this stuff is going to drive me crazy³.)

The other problem was me stupidly deciding to use the "read" and "to-read" shelf tags. So many unread novels, sob.

Hilariously(?), adding over 2000 books and 150 reviews at once catapulted me to the top of Goodreads' weekly user stats, which made me double-check my profile settings about 800 times to make sure there was no personal data visible. (Paranoid, much?) I have gotten a couple of really random friend requests ("Join my urban fantasy group!" Um, no thanks?), though, not sure if that's normal or because I'm on that list. (If you're reading this and have a Goodreads account, obviously friending is welcomed.)


1. To import books to Goodreads, you need a spreadsheet of your books. Which means I finally, after TWO YEARS of using Delicious Library, figured out how to export my database to a spreadsheet without destroying the Nihongo. I would be proud of myself, if it weren't so incredibly sad.

2. As an alternative, I did consider going back through old entries and adding author tags, but I don't really like the idea of having a bunch of tags that are only used once or twice. Plus, it would be annoying when I blanked on the author's name.

3. My favorite is the ones that are like "Romaji Title (in Japanese) [import]." (Just to be clear, I don't mean they list the title in Japanese. I mean it actually says "in Japanese.") Thanks. Because that's not redundant at all.

No, I lied. My favorite is Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne 7, which is just noticed is listed as "7." How are you supposed to find that?

From Wired magazine: Japan, Ink, an interesting article about how doujinshi has escaped the wrath of Japanese publishers. (I gave this article to my mom and was like, "Look, this is why I'm going to Japan in December. :D") I thought it was interesting that the example they used (when talking about buying doujinshi in the same store as you buy regular manga and how that would never happen in the US) was Harry Potter. I mean, true, you don't get it in the same place as the books, but like the HP powers that be aren't turning a blind eye to fanfic?

Also, I was amused by the little short piece about how our brains process manga, mostly because it reminded me of my old coworker who complained that she couldn't read manga because she found it difficult to look at both the pictures and words at the same time.

I spent a lot of my free time last weekend (and some this week) finishing up my database. ( database blather )

Next projects: Adding drama CDs to database, cleaning up novel and artbook data, finishing Japan shopping list, crying over lack of Flesh & Blood 11, finishing review backlog...let's see how much I get done before we leave for Hawaii. >.>