ShelfJoy Review: A Cool App for Your Bookish Lists

I was contacted a while back to do a review of this fairly new bookish app:

ShelfJoy

I eagerly jumped at the chance, but was delayed in publishing this post due to personal reasons.

The first time I heard of ShelfJoy was back in February when Vicky at Books and Strips posted a review of it. Apart from Goodreads, I don’t use social media apps to organize my books. I use Goodreads to keep track of what I’ve read and books I want to purchase and use a computer app that I pay for to keep track of books I own. (It’s called Book Collectorz and it’s very effective.) I was satisfied with just those two but when I took a peek at ShelfJoy, I immediately took a liking to it for the following reasons:

The layout is clean.

The website is easy to navigate.

I can make lists about whatever I want.

Covers of the books I include on my list quickly pop up whether they are books or comics.

I can easily share my list on other social media sites.

Books are linked to Amazon for easy purchase.

Because of these reasons, I think this app will appeal to bloggers, who can make lists that complement their posts. So far, I’ve made two lists: one for strong female protagonists in comics, which was inspired by this comic book review; and another for fantasy novels that have assassins, based on my most recent Tough Travels post.

However, much as I like the app, I do have a few complaints. The first is that we can only sign up using Facebook or Twitter, which was an annoyance for me because sometimes I’d rather not use either. The others mostly pop up when making my lists:

It’s tricky to make edits to my lists, for example, deleting something I wrote or later omitting an emoticon I initially used to reflect my reaction to the book.

I can’t choose the order I want the books to be posted in.

It would be nice if the cover of a book on the list is included along with the link posted to other social media sites.

I think this app can be fun for those who like to share what they’ve read with others and helpful for those seeking recommendations. As I said before, I don’t use many bookish apps and I don’t really have an interest in signing up for any others, but I think I’ll return to ShelfJoy every now and then to make and share book lists.

If you’re interested in the app, go ahead and sign up. It’s free.

You can see my ShelfJoy profile here. 🙂

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