Visual Bookshelf

For the past few days, i've been wasting my time with an application on Facebook, the Visual Bookshelf. At first, i was intrigued as it was suggesting books that even Amazon doesn't seem to notice, possibly because it is drawing its recommendations from a different pool of users who are reading similar books. It was proving to be a nifty tool. I discovered a couple of new books.

However, sometime Monday, something snapped inside me when i saw a new feature called "Leader Board." On it were the top ten people with the highest count of books. Although there were about three people with normal taste in books, the rest were total whores listing, nothing but lowest common denominator crap. How many books i read is never really a competition, but my sense of propriety felt violated. Who the hell are these people who believe reading is nothing more than gulping down big corn syrup bottles of escapism? And why do i have to look at their sick bloated faces on my sidebar?

(It almost makes sense that bad taste in books goes had in hand with morbid obesity.)

After two days of struggling to bulk up my book count with the application crashing every few minutes, I admit defeat. I could add hundreds more before delving into books that i feel would pollute my generated recommendations, but i cannot compete with the mindless march of craptitude.