Thanks for wanting to learn more about Unreads. My name is Matt Grommes and I'll be your tour guide today. I'm the founder, programmer, and everything else here at Unreads. If you have questions or compliments, please let me know. Complaints are to be filed in the cabinet in the basement, next to the leopard.

The Big Idea

There are 2 levels to my idea for Unreads. The first is the personal level. I want to give people an easy tool to choose good books to read and to help them Read Deeply. By Reading Deeply I mean going through a book with the intent of really engaging with it, not just skimming. The best way to do that is to keep a journal of your reading. A running journal of your thoughts, which I call a Bookblog here on Unreads, helps you be more mindful of the book, even if you only end up making a few notes in it. And if you're a student, a Bookblog can be an invaluable tool for studying, helping you keep track of your thoughts even when you have a lot of reading to do for multiple classes.

Then, on a more social level, I want to collect conversations about books. I find myself constantly buying books when they come out based on recommendations from various sources but by the time I get around to reading the book, the conversation has moved on and I'm reduced to Google searching and trying to find what people are saying about the book. So I want Unreads to become a place people can come to and find conversations and thoughts on the books they're reading. So eventually we'll search out what people are saying around the web on blogs, message boards, etc., and link to them here in addition to Unreads user's Bookblogs and Reviews. That way you can easily find out about a book without relying on Amazon reviews, wading through unrelated message board posts or missing some good commentary on a blog just because the book is 6 months or a year old.

About the site

• Your Stack - Your Unreads Stack is the heart of the site. Here's where you enter the list of books on your personal unread stack/shelf/wishlist. These can be books you've bought but haven't read yet, haven't bought yet, were assigned for a class, etc. If you're like me you have a lot of unread books so we've tried to make adding them as painless as possible. You just enter the ISBN code from the UPC on the back of the book or the title and we'll look up the pertinant info. From your Stack you can see how many other stacks have that book, how many Bookblogs have been written on it, as much info as we can give you.
• Bookblogs - Each book on your Stack has a Bookblog associated with it. A Bookblog is a journal for you to make notes, ask questions to yourself (and soon to others on the site), mark out particularly good quotes or sections, anything really. The heart of Reading Deeply is concentration on your reading and reading with the intent of keeping a Bookblog really helps focus you. I personally use those mini-sticky note / page markers to mark pages I want to come back to and then I make my Bookblog notes later. It's very effective. If you're a student your Bookblog can be an invaluable tool for making sure you're prepared for class discussion, tests, etc.
• Reviews - Once you're done with a book you may want to crystalize your thoughts in a fuller Review of the book. Going back over what you've read by doing a Review is one more way of getting the most out of a book. Our reviews are indexed and searched by the search engines as well so you can really contribute to the global discussion on your books.
• Bookclubs - I haven't launched the Bookclub feature yet but they'll be available soon. An Unreads Bookclub is much like a regular bookclub. It's a group discussion of a particular book, rather than a personal journal like a Bookblog. More details will be available soon.