Thanks lucyzoe for your kind words. You can actually view any members' Bookshelves already though it's not very easy. You just have to fiind their username, either in the Forum or on any of the Bookshelves lists (the heads icon below every book title). Probably the easiest way to do it is to find out one book your friends own and how many in total they have. Then search for that book, look at the Bookshelves list which is sorted in order by number of Bookshelves then click on your friend's username.
We do plan to greatly improve the social networking side of the site and it should be happening in the next few months. You will then have "friends" and you will be able to see when they add new books, make Notes on books and Recipes, add posts on the Forum, etc. as well of course easily see their Bookshelves.
One other suggestion I have in the meantime is that you set up a Free membership with just the current book you are all cooking from on there. You can all access the membership to view the book recipes - you just need to share the username and password. Don't forget to add reviews (Notes) for all the recipes you cook! Then all the members of your group can see the other Notes that members post by looking at the Notes tab for the book, which lists all recipe Notes as well. As the Notes will be in the name of your Cookbook group, each member will need to add their name after their recipe review. It will be really interesting to see which recipes the members choose to cook, what they thought of it, what recommendations they make. You will have a much better feeling of cooking along together. And it won't cost them anything!