I’ve been reading quite more often lately. (Lately) since I have nothing to do at the office. I switch between sudoku and books/ebooks. Books came cheap these days, thanks to bookstore warehouse sales. Big Bookshop warehouse sale in Atria was a surprise. I expected to see bundles of stationeries, because that’s what I knew about Big Bookshop. However, the selection of books were extensive dammit. They brought in books from Singapore and UK. Paper-back, international best-seller titles were on sale for RM10-RM15, while the hard-covers went for RM16-RM20. I had to use next month budget for books shopping 
Times Bookstore Warehouse Sales are among the thing I anticipate each year. Even the latest titles were seen on the rack. MPH Warehouse Sale is just so-so. The price is still steep, and obviously they are trying to get rid of the hardcovers. Although they look nice, hardcovers take more space, heavier and not for carry-arounds. Furthermore, I take good care of my books. Even my 15 year old magazines are in mint condition. I never fold the corner side of the page to mark where I stopped reading. I used to remember the page number but when I started to read several books at once, I inserted a small card or small piece of paper so that I know where I should continue to read.
Owh ya, went to Doulos Cruise Book Sale in Port Klang the other day. A little bit frustated with the amount of books. In the newspaper it said 1.5mil books, I bet there were only 5000 on board.
Well, here comes the actual point, being a (kononnye) organize person, I would like to introduce this neat stuff called LibraryThing. I read about it from Ted’s blog, it is suppose to be an online library catalogue plus some other extras. When you add your collection of books, it will search for the title from Amazon (US, UK, Japan etc), Library of Congress or from other 45 libraries in the world.
Besides keeping track of what you have read, reading and will read, it actually connects you to other reader who read the same book. You can write reviews or read what other readers think of the book. You would know who else having the same collection as yours. There is also a function called ‘Psst’, which will recommend you what other books you should read, according to your collection of books and ratings you gave them.
Aaaaand, it has its own widget and LibraryThing mobile. If those do not attract you much, what if I tell you, for signing up it only requires you to enter user ID and password. Yeap, with those two, you’re already a registered member! Forget about whole page of tell-me-about-yourself.
There are about 40 titles in my list as for now, and I think those only 30% of what’s on my shelves (and boxes) at home, not including ebooks. Will be updating every now and then.
I realize that I’m reading the ‘mainstream’ titles, and there are actually a lot of independent gems out there which I notice but haven’t got the chance to read yet. However, comparing to most of other Malaysian who only reads an average of 2 books each year (that does not include Permata Yang Hilang, Mangga & URTV ye adik-adik), I know I’m doing better than others.
I’m not trying to read at least 1000 to be a writer, because I never want to be a writer, neither want to read 100 books this year as part of my resolution. But this LibraryThing-ngamagic, I LIKE!!