National book week, Shelfari vs Library Thing

In case anyone has forgotten or did not know, this week which started last November 19 until this Friday, the 23rd of November is the National Book Week. Book worms here and abroad must be rejoicing and hitting up their books or their favorite bookstore.

Why didn’t I mention the library? Well here in the Philippines, public libraries are something sort of a tourist attraction. Something that you’d find in very few towns or cities. Hell, even in my local town of Silang, the tiny public library with is obsolete books never returned to existence after its building was razed down by a fire back when I was still in my sophomore year of highschool. (Some 5 or 6 years ago?!)

We are a malling republic, not much of a reading one so that’s why there’s almost a mall in every other province or city while most libraries are stuck in the schools. Don’t get fooled that just because there are always a lot of people inside every National Bookstore or any other bookstore in a mall, most of them are in there for the school supplies, pocket books, lyrics (aka song hits) books, horoscope and those ghost stories. Am I just being mean or what?

Then again I may be wrong with my observation as if one were to look into the internets, you’d find that most bloggers are also book lovers. Hence forth, the prominence of such book related sites like Library Thing and now the recently launched Shelfari. Though I haven’t blogged that much about my own book catalog or the books I’ve been reading, thanks to these two sites I am able to share my catalog to the world and talk to other book-loving Pinoys here and abroad.

The first site I signed up for was Library Thing back in last year, so far I have 90% of my catalog saved in group I joined in Library Thing but after spending some time in its pages, users’ book catalogs and discussion threads, it feels just like being in a library, but without the Librarian constantly telling us to keep silence.

To balance things off, I also started to spend more time in my Shelfari account. So far, it’s also been an enjoyable experience sharing bookshelves and talking about books to other Pinoy bookworms the world-over. The way I see it, the main difference between Shelfari and Library Thing is that the former is more focused on social-networking and aesthetics while the latter is for serious boookworms. But to be fair, Shelfari has just been around yet so it has more Web 2.0 elements built-in to it.

Reason is the reason has a more thorough Tagged as: Books, Internet, Philippines