Thanks to Conduit (a/k/a Stuart Neville), there’s news of a cool site called BookRabbit (slogan: “Be surprised by books – share, connect, discover”). Here’s how Conduit describes it:

BookRabbit.com is a website at once a social networking site and online store for book lovers. They offer a selection of titles that rivals Amazon in both choice and price, but the shopping experience is wrapped up in a library of ‘bookshelves’ uploaded by the site’s users.

Here’s how it works: You upload a picture of your bookshelf… and then tag your books. The system then finds other users who have the same books, so you can browse what else they have, say hello, comment on the books, or even go and buy them. It’s a very well put together website, with bags of potential.

(Book purchases work for UK members only at this point, but the site is new; I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see them open up branches in other countries as well. In the meantime, you can join and share photos and so on regardless of where you happen to live.)

I was a little bemused by the idea of taking a photo of my bookshelf, singular. And I could see at once how an insecure bibliophile (not thinking of anyone in particular, of course) might wish to game the system by, say, emptying the shelf of all the trashy thrillers and beach reads — replacing them with classics (old or latter-day) fetched from the piled-up cardboard boxes in the garage.

But as I said, this is a way cool idea.