It’s really Michele Albert’s fault. I have been lusting over her online library for weeks, and after two days of pretending I know WTH I’m doing with PHP, I have one! You see, I have 
books here and books there all over the house, and get tired of the accident prone husband complaining that the stacks are in his way as he tries to walk from one room to the other. In the way? Puh-lease. Books are never in the way. But I digress . . .
I have been wanting to catalog the hundreds thousands of books I have in the bedroom and the other bedroom and the office bedroom and the dining area and the living room and the garage, but I wanted something besides an Excel spreadsheet. I didn’t want the hassle of Shelfari, or the bugginess of Library Thing. Whoo-hoo! The Now-Reading WordPress plugin.
Now Reading is an expansive WordPress plugin which allows you to maintain a virtual library of books. Display which you’ve read, which you’re currently reading, and which you plan to read; add metadata to describe them; write reviews detailing what you thought of them. Now Reading fetches its data from any Amazon domain, so all you need is an ISBN or book title and you’re good to go.
This is why I love WordPress. So many cool geek toys! Though I did admittedly cheat just a bit. I had to tweak a lot of code to make it work with my theme. Also, since you input a start and finished reading time, what I did for the books I read prior to the plugin installation is just list them as which book they were in my finished reading queue for the year; I have no idea of those reading dates.
I’ve also got four books “on hold” that don’t show, meaning I’ve put them down and need to pick them back up and finish them. Nothing wrong with the books. Just my fight to find reading time. But I have read twenty books this year, which sounds pathetic until you realize I only read maybe 6 all year last year - and read all of those in November and December!
Anyhow, it’s a work in progress, and I’m only allowing myself to input 1 book for every page I get written. Seems like a good measurement of my progress, eh? I know the husband won’t be happy that it’s going to take this long, but once Finn & Olivia’s book is done, I can concentrate on just the library project! You can see a few library items on the sidebar (which I think I’ve finally widgetized to my liking) under “Alison’s Addictions: Reading, Finished, Waiting,” with the full list on the library page itself.
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I love the Now Reading Plugin. I’ve been using it for over a year and think it’s fabulous. Plus, the creator, Rob, is constantly updating and fixing bugs, which is really nice to find in a plugin. New plugins are like a bad addiction, aren’t they?
by Angela James August 14th, 2007 at 7:51 amOh, this sounds so cool! I might have to go check it out…
by Fedora August 14th, 2007 at 9:27 amI just realized what would be cool would be a way for people to comment on the individual book pages in the library!
by Alison August 14th, 2007 at 10:11 amLooks great! I love playing with my now-reading plugin. :) I’ve tried to figure out a way to add the standard WP comment form to the plugin’s single.php page, but haven’t had any luck. When I have a little more time, though, I’m going to tinker with it some more. I’ll let you know if I have any success.
by Michele August 14th, 2007 at 10:15 amThat would be so awesome if it would work, because we love talking books, duh! ;)
by Alison August 14th, 2007 at 10:33 amWow, that is so cool. Will have to get it on my site.
by Ava Rose Johnson August 14th, 2007 at 11:50 amOne of the nice features of the plugin is the ability to put your Amazon Associates ID into the options and then, when someone clicks through to Amazon from your site, you get a percentage of the sale. It’s a nice side-benefit of using the plugin. Be aware, however, that you cannot make money by clicking through your own website and making purchases, unless you’re going to set up your Amazon Associates account seperate from your regular purchasing account. Which I guess you could do, but might not be entirely legitimate.
by Angela James August 14th, 2007 at 11:56 amLove the thought of having one site to keep up with all my books. I have books all over my house and sometimes can’t find the one I’m looking for when I’m ready to read it. I’ll have to give this a try.
by Liza August 14th, 2007 at 4:01 pmAlison,
to add a comment function for the individual book pages, why not use JS-Kit? There’s a comment & rating widget, so people can also rate the book. The comments are threaded, using Akismet for checking on spam, email notification for site admin and people who leave a comment, full customization and best of all it’s free. It may not be the best solution around, but one that’s easy and only requires copy&paste for installation (it works with all web pages, having WordPress isn’t a requirement).
HaloScan may be an alternative, but uses a pop-up window. I prefer to have the comments embedded within a page, but that’s just me.
by Croco August 15th, 2007 at 4:53 am[…] This plugin has been downloaded over 16,000 times. How I missed it, I’ll never know. Hat tip: Alison Kent and her article Book Heaven! […]
by Ten Keyboards » Blog Archive » Now Reading Plugin Great for Writers August 15th, 2007 at 6:08 amCroco - I’m not familiar with JS-Kit! I’ll have to look into it, thanks!
by Alison August 15th, 2007 at 9:50 amThat is especially cool. I wish blogger had more nifty things like this that I didn’t have to code every time I wanted to add something. Very nice. :)
by Bri August 15th, 2007 at 9:55 amOkay, the JS-Kit looks workable, but it doesn’t have a notification process, right? So if I have 100+ books in the library and someone comments, I won’t know?
by Alison August 15th, 2007 at 10:10 amI just sent you an email. JS-Kit has email notification. It worked for me as I tested it. Play around with it and let me know.
by Croco August 15th, 2007 at 10:22 amI’d be interested to hear how this works out for you , Alison.
by Angela James August 15th, 2007 at 10:24 amHi Alison:
Hmmm…. This looks interesting. I’ve looked at WordPress off and on for a while, but I never found a version that ran on Windows Server/SQL Server. I guess something like this might force me to buy another machine to run Linux. And learn PHP. {laughs}
Thanks for the tip and take care………..Wayne
by Wayne (aka Trybble) August 15th, 2007 at 5:15 pm