Pondering Goodreads Book Shelf Names

One of the many things I find interesting about Goodreads is the inventive names its members come up with for their virtual bookshelves. Since I’m both a reader and an author on Goodreads, it’s always flattering to come across a shelf with my name, or to find one of my books on someone’s “Wishlist” shelf.

There are other shelf names I’ve seen in conjunction with my work that give me a warm glow such as “Keeper,” and “All-time-favorites.”

Lest these wonderful category names threaten to increase the circumference of my noggin by two full hat sizes, there is also the humility-inducing flip side of the coin, the shelves with names like “Sucks-so-bad-I-couldn’t-finish,” and “Cough-Historicals-Cough.” My debut novel, “Fire at Midnight,” ended up on the latter-named shelf in a Goodreader’s library, which puzzled me because despite being a romance, the novel was thoroughly researched for accuracy of period and setting details. It could be the shelf owner doesn’t like romance, but the implication that I hadn’t done my research rankled, and I found myself wishing that the shelf was named, “Well-researched-but-too-much-intimacy-for-my-taste.”

My own shelves are currently limited to the plebian default names that come with the software: “Read,” “Currently Reading,” and “To Read.”

After seeing the variety of meaningful, fun, and sometimes snarky shelf names created by other members, I’m tempted to create shelves for better classification of the eclectic titles I own:

“Books-That-Make-Me-Sound-Intelligent-Even-If-I’ve-Never-Read-Them”

“Books-That-Demonstrate-I’m-Attuned-To-Pop-Culture/aka-The-Twilight-Shelf”

“Books-Illustrating-How-Fickle-Pop-Culture-Is/aka-The-Black-Dagger-Brotherhood-Shelf”

“Books-Proving-There-Is-Money-To-Be-Made-From-Controversy/aka-The-Dan-Brown-Shelf”

“Autobiographies-By-People-Who-Have-Not-Led-Interesting-Lives”

“Horror-That-Scared-The-Sh*t-Out-of-Me”

“Science-Fiction-I’m-Not-Sure-I-Quite-Grasped”

“Advertised-as-Funny-But-About-as-Funny-as-a-Colonoscopy”

“Sympathy-Reads-AAR Rejects”

“Books-I-Probably-Don’t-Want-To-Admit-I’ve-Read”

Well, I think you get the idea. Any additional suggestions for shelf-naming ideas are welcome.


Lisa Marie