Browsing the Bookshelves

I've just crossed the 1,000 books mark on LibraryThing. It's been a fascinating exercise in discovering who has the same books that I do, who reads the same books, what they think of them and what less they like reading. I still have 500 or so books to go - that's my best guess. But one thing has really struck me: about half the books I have catalogued to date appear to be unique among Library Thing users - and given that there are nearly 20,000 members, that seems odd to me. I have never thought of my own book collection as being unusual - in fact I would have thought that my reading tastes were fairly mainstream. Perhaps some people choose not to catalogue their pre-ISBN books - I have, but it is more work.  And perhaps the proportions will change as more and more books are added to Library Thing's rapidly growing database (10,000 new books were added in just the last 24 hours).  It is a figure that I will continue to watch as time goes on.