My Bookshelf

Very often while talking with friends and colleagues about a particular subject the standard question about what books you have read or are you reading comes up. I love books, my adorable wife loves books too, and our kids got the gene, so it's not uncommon in hour house to see books almost everywhere.

Add to that that I'm sort of a pack rat about published material but not to the grade to be considered compulsive (please don't ask my wife). Once in a while some of the books that nay be old editions, outdated or that don't have great value for us get donated.

We are not the kind that sometimes hide what they are reading being afraid that we'll know what you know, be sure that with that attitude what we really know is that you are a moron, but anyway, we love to share with anybody the grateful experience when we find a book or any other published material that we enjoy or serve our needs in our profession. We are also outspoken, trying to be diplomatic and polite when some material really sucks.

Lorena short time ago received some books to review, and I just received my first one to review from O'Reilly Media (Building Wireless Sensor Networks: with ZigBee by Robert Faludi), so we'll use our respective blogs to share our reviews and comments.

Then let me share my piece of our bookshelf, and this will also help me in the age of the Internet, Web 2.0 and Social Media to answer the recurrent question of "What are you reading?" with a simple and short URL to this article.

I've been trying to keep an updated reading list in my LinkedIn profile, but the client interface is horrible and I didn't find anywhere how to share, even searched Amazon down to the sewer lines, who is providing the ReadingList Application for LinkedIn.

Then somebody recently invited me to join Shelfari, at first glance I really liked the web interface and the fact that the bookshelf looks like a shelf, even with a small picture of the books covers. Also in case you don't know, this site has been around since 2006 but they got acquired by Amazon in 2008, so I don't expect them to have funding issues and will be constants enhancements and integration with Amazon. I started then the process of putting together the virtual version of my bookshelf.

Be aware, I'm a geek, so bare with me if what you see on the shelf are mostly technical books, but you will also see many titles about cooking (we love to cook), finance (interesting ones but we are not rich yet), and general topics. And like anything else that it is nowadays in cyberspace, this bookshelf is a work in progress and subject to change without notice, I'm still in the process to update the list and obviously new books will be added as they arrive.

Then without further delay let me introduce you to my new Shelfari Bookshelf.

Shelfari: Book reviews on your book blog
Share a book review on Shelfari, where this reader meets fellow readers.

As you may see on the shelf, there are several books that are listed as Kindle Edition, yes I fell for it and I'll write soon why I love the new gadget and how it is helping in my profession and passion for reading.

Note: I didn't took the time to go and double check for the actual edition of every single book I've on the shelf.

Hope you like it and find it useful ...

Cheers
Jorge