{"id":19481,"date":"2010-12-08T21:42:46","date_gmt":"2010-12-09T04:42:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/?p=19481"},"modified":"2010-12-08T21:42:46","modified_gmt":"2010-12-09T04:42:46","slug":"the-return-of-recently-read-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2010\/12\/08\/the-return-of-recently-read-2.html","title":{"rendered":"The Return of “Recently Read”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>So I’ve been struggling of late to keep up the “Recently Read” thang in the sidebar. Because what’s the point of reading something if you can’t show it off to people.<\/p>\n

I was previously using a plug-in called “AVH Amazon” to show stuff I’d recently read by building an Amazon wish list of same and then using that plug-in to display it. \u00a0Alas, Amazon recently changed their wish list API<\/a> so that AVH Amazon (and a number of similar tools) don’t work. No idea why, unless it was to draw people toward using the official Amazon tools for same.<\/p>\n

Yes, there are official Amazon widgets<\/a> for wish lists (and others), but, honestly, they’re just damned fugly. \u00a0You’d think Amazon would be jumping at the chance toward flexibility and customizability of stuff that points people back to their site to buy items … but, sadly, no.<\/p>\n

After a lot of trying out off various solutions, here’s what I’m currently using for the Recently Read items in the sidebar.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Goodreads.com<\/a> is a community “book review and library” site. \u00a0Supposedly it has a million-zillion users, which sounds promising, though there’s no sign of a business model, which is somewhat less so. \u00a0However, the whole place looks pretty professional and usable, so if I can’t use Amazon to track this stuff, this seems like a reasonable alternative.<\/li>\n
  2. The WP Goodreads Bookshelf plug-in<\/a>. \u00a0Though this thing is stamped “beta” all over the place, it seems to work like a champ in providing a highly customizable way of displaying items from a Goodread dataset. \u00a0(While Goodreads does have widgets, they are, for some bizarre reason, static — i.e., if you add a book to your “read” list, you have to recreate the sidebar listing. Yuck.)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    So that’s what I currently have going in my sidebar. \u00a0The only awkwardness of it is that I imported my old “Recently” Amazon wishlist and, because the plug-in is set to look at the most recently entered, that means the most recently read stuff is not actually showing. \u00a0That will, in theory, change over time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    So I’ve been struggling of late to keep up the “Recently Read” thang in the sidebar. Because what’s the point of reading something if you can’t show it off to people. I was previously using a plug-in called “AVH Amazon” to show stuff I’d recently read by building an Amazon wish list of same and … Continue reading “The Return of “Recently Read””<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[55,3,36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogging-technical","category-blogging","category-media-books"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":16712,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2010\/02\/10\/the-return-of-recently-read.html","url_meta":{"origin":19481,"position":0},"title":"The Return of “Recently Read”","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 10-Feb-10 11:00pm","format":false,"excerpt":"I had a clever Amazon-focused widget in the sidebar that would show items on a named Amazon Wish List, which I was using to show what books I'd recently read, but it stopped working reliably a while back. So now I'm using a customized version of the AVH Amazon WordPress\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging - Technical"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging - Technical","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/blogging-technical"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12451,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2008\/04\/29\/recently_read.html","url_meta":{"origin":19481,"position":1},"title":"Recently Read","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 29-Apr-08 4:05pm","format":false,"excerpt":"I finally found a replacement for Blogfuel to show my \"Recently\" Read\/Watched sidebar block. 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Alas, the service seems to be not working (at least it's not showing up on...","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging - Technical"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging - Technical","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/blogging-technical"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":13091,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2008\/07\/25\/amazon_for_the_win.html","url_meta":{"origin":19481,"position":3},"title":"Amazon for the win","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 25-Jul-08 10:47pm","format":false,"excerpt":"I love the Amazon Wish List capability -- being able to flag any item in Amazon as something you want, then being able to point friends and family at same....","rel":"","context":"In "Big Business"","block_context":{"text":"Big Business","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/big-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":51095,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2015\/05\/13\/as-a-general-note-to-the-inner-circle-my-daughter-has-finally-gotten-her-amazon-wish-list-up-to-date.html","url_meta":{"origin":19481,"position":4},"title":"As a general note to the Inner Circle, my daughter has (finally) gotten her Amazon Wish List up to date.","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 13-May-15 5:25pm","format":false,"excerpt":"As a general note to the Inner Circle, my daughter has (finally) gotten her Amazon Wish List up to date. 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