How Reading Trails
Works

Welcome to Reading Trails

Reading Trails offers tools to organize books in a new way. We are a community of passionate, thoughtful readers who use social networking and trails to share our reading experiences and create new ones.

Table of Contents

Trails

What is a trail?

A trail is a sequence of books linked in an interesting way—for example, a series of fun beach reads for your upcoming vacation, a tour through the books that influenced Milan Kundera, a professor's introduction to French existentialism.

Trails intersect

Because one book can appear on many trails, trails intersect. When browsing a trail, click the intersections link in each book to see all the intersections.

Example of intersections: Middlemarch

Share trails with friends

If you've made a trail, or found one you want to share, click the Share link and enter friends' email addresses to send them the trail. If you are a member, you can also share trails with your Reading Trails friends using the same link.

Open Trails

Open trails are a community effort—any member can add books and book descriptions. However, each member can only remove or edit the descriptions of books he or she has added.

How do I make an interesting trail?

If you're stumped, try this. Browse our trails until you find a book you have read. This will be the kernel of your new trail. Click new trail.

Then ask yourself, what book should people read next? You don't have to know why they should read that book. Trust your gut. And repeat. Once you get going, maybe you'll find an overarching "reason" for linking those books together, or maybe not. In any case, you've made a trail.

Tags, Your Books, and Your Trails

Organize your books and trails with tags

Reading Trails members use tags to organize their books and trails—with a twist.

Your Books and Your Trails

Every book you tag becomes part of Your Books, which people can see listed on your profile. Every trail you tag becomes part of Your Trails.

We provide some basic tags to get you started (Favorite books, Planning to read, Reading, and Read for books, and Favorite trails, Traveling, and Completed for trails) but you can use New tag to organize your books and trails as you see fit.

To remove a book from Your Books or a trail from Your Trails, delete all its tags by clicking the "x" next to each one.

The Twist

Books tagged Reading or Read are marked with a special icon. Any other book saved in Your Books is considered Unread.

Unread Reading Read

Professors and Authors

Professors and authors have been invited by Reading Trails to share their knowledge with our members.

They are professors from around the country, best-selling authors, and others writers whose expertise offers interesting or unexpected insights.

To suggest yourself or a friend, please contact us.

View all professors and authors

View all professor and author trails

Widgets

With widgets, you can include a trail on your website or blog. This is a great way to share trails you have created, or to showcase books related to your website.

To get a widget, click the Get widget link on any trail. Example : Cosmic Laughter

Questions?

Please contact us with any questions or comments. We love to hear from you.