LibraryThing kicks ass.

It is my dream web app. With it, I get to spend a sick amount of time playing online and playing with books at the same time.

We’ve put just under 600 books in our catalog so far, and it is addictively fun. No, you don’t need to be a library geek to think so — Lisa is also hooked, it isn’t just me. At this rate, we’ll have our whole library online (we’re not quite halfway there) in another week.

Reasons LibraryThing rocks:

• I can be sloppy, type in a few words and presto, it calls up records from Library of Congress and/or Amazon from the US, UK, or Canada (and a couple of others, but sadly I only need records in English)
• Woo hoo, tagging! I can use tags I create to sort my books into the categories I want
• Eye candy — book covers are included, and I can even view books just by their covers
• I’m finding more good books by browsing libraries that are like mine, seeing what books they have that I don’t that I’ll probably like

LibraryThing is still in beta. One of the features I hope gets added is support for uploading cover images; I’d love to be able to add pictures from my 1950s science fiction paperback collection.

There is a FAQ, there is a blog, there’s even a zeitgeist. If you are at all bookish, go give this guy ten bucks and get started already.