Come visit us on Goodreads! We’re back for another year in 2024.

Front Edge Publishing Marketing Director Susan Stitt and I both were very active in the Goodreads community throughout 2023. Come visit us in 2024!

Here’s Susan’s home page.

Here’s my Home page.

Here’s my background with this wonderful community of friends: “Thanks to my adult ‘kids’ and a couple of close friends, who almost bullied me into becoming active again in December 2022, I made a 2023 New Year’s Resolution to reactivate my long dormant Goodreads account.”

In March 2023, after three months of daily activity on Goodreads, I posted a column that since has been widely shared around the Internet, headlined: Why Goodreads may be the world’s slowest social media—and why that’s a good thing.

Now, Susan and I regularly swap Goodreads tips and recommendations of ways to share news about authors. So far, I’m pleased to have connected with nearly 500 friends across the global Goodreads network. And, on a daily basis, I try to be a good citizen. Simple civility and politeness—things that my late Mom taught me as a kid—go a long way to building lasting relationships via this sometimes antiquated and often glitchy social media interface.

One example: When a friend adds an encouraging comment or update to my reviews, I always reply with brief words of “Thank you.” (Mom would be proud.)

Then, an even more important example: I try to write my reviews to include a bit about myself (readers want to get to know each other as well as the books we’re reading) and I try to offer insights that I know friends will appreciate. In those Goodreads columns, I’m always aware that I’m writing “within” and “for” our community that is forming and expanding. 

Here are three good examples of this from the past week:

When I reviewed the New York Times staff’s wonderful book Overlooked, I personalized my reactions to the book by explaining some of the core values that guide my life as a journalist. I know a good number of my friends on Goodreads are media professionals and they appreciate seeing such details.

When I wrote about Patti Smith’s memoir Just Kids, I included some key information about her “Detroit years” because I know a number of friends are steeped in Detroit media and history.

When I reviewed the late Larry McMurtry’s Desert Rose, which is part of a series of McMurtry reviews I’ve been writing, I explained some things that I recall other McMurtry fans want to know.

Please, join us over at Goodreads in 2024!

And I’ll repeat those links:

Here’s Susan’s home page.

Here’s my Home page.

We’ll be honored to accept your “friend” requests!