Good Reading on GoodReads

It is Day 11 of the 15 day Author Blog Challenge. Since I must prewrite this on day10, you will be reading my day 10 post on day 11- a day late. Confused yet?

On Day 10 of the Author Blog Challenge the prompt was:
Are you on GoodReads? It seems a pretty obvious place for authors to hang out, yet I’m not sure authors are using it to quite the maximal benefit. If you are on GoodReads, how often do you visit/use the site? How often do you update your reading list? What other kinds of things do you post? Are you finding yourself using it the way social media was intended: to create a community? If you are NOT on GoodReads, have you made a deliberate choice to skip it? What other mechanisms do you utilize for meeting other readers/writers/authors? How else could you begin to create your very own community?

I am on GoodReads.  But, I rarely update.

Why?

I like to browse around in my local library.  Most of what I read is books in the new book (new to the library, that is) shelves that catch my eye.  Sometimes I'll devour the book in a couple of sittings.  Sometimes it will sit for most of the three week period my library allows you to take books out for, and then "suddenly" I'll get an urge to read it. Sometimes, time's up and I haven't even cracked the book.  Back to the library it goes.

Other times, I read 3 or 4 books at the same time.

So, enough times, by the time I think about getting onto GoodReads, I'm done.  So, unless I have a lot of spare time, I don't update my statuses.

And then, I just don't have the normal, everyday statuses, and GoodReads doesn't have anything for me to explain my true statuses with.

For example, the books on my current profile:

Want to read:  The Bird, by Jo Michaels.  I won this in a contest Jo put on (thanks, Jo!), and last Saturday, planned to read it on the Auto Train.  But when I opened my Kindle app on my iPhone in the train station The Bird had flown! Seriously, the Kindle app had updated and the book (which I KNOW FOR A FACT WAS THERE) is now missing.  So seems to be the email where Jo sent me the file.  Sigh.....no status button for "book mysteriously disappeared from my Kindle and it isn't listed on my Kindle page on Amazon, either.  Too embarrassed to contact author because it would show what a cheapskate I am since I really should buy it from her."

Reading:  Outpost, by Ann Aguirre. It is a great book, but I had to return it before I was done, and haven't found it since.  There is no button for "I had to return it to the library before I could finish it." (same thing with another book, The Age of Miracles...which, by the way, would deserve 10 stars if I could give that many.)

Another "currently reading" book, The Help - I gave up on months ago and have no intention of ever going back to it. But, I can't figure out how to delete it.

Finally there is no status button for "I get most of my books from the library because my husband will divorce me if I bring in one more book into the house, thereby causing the house to collapse into itself due to all the weight of the 1,249,556 books I already own, including the Edgar Rice Burroughs books my Mom bought me in 1963 when I had a broken leg, that would crumble into dust if I look at them but I can't bear to get rid of those remnants of my childhood."

So...that's my GoodReads story.

What's yours?