Interesting article about GoodReads

[tacokick]

It points out how it doesn’t really work.

www.newstatesman.com/science-tech/social-media/2020/08/better-goodreads-possible-bad-for-books-storygraph-amazon

Do you find Goodreads helpful?

[charlatti]

I use it for tracking my books, entering giveaways, reading reviews, and rarely but occasionally scrolling to see what friends have liked. Sometimes I get good recommendations, sometimes I don’t, but I don’t think that’s a flaw in the site. I have never had trouble navigating or finding books either, so I’m not sure why that seems to be such an issue.

ETA that other site mentioned at the end makes me think of Pinterest, where if I look for one spaghetti receipt they flood me with nothing but spaghetti. I don’t always want the same type of book or even a specific type of book. It says that’s not the method, but it also sounds like you have to choose very specific things.

[dontlook]

I really dislike goodreads. I use it to track books and check out reviews. I wish they had a better way to get recommendations. My feed is completely useless.

[meowmaps]

Like charlatti I haven't had any specific complaints or problems with the site. I've seen/read/heard a lot of complaints and maybe my expectations are low, but it serves its purpose as far as I'm concerned.

I should add that I have 10 or 11 friends on there (*cries*) and 80% of them are inactive so I don't get recommendations from my friends anyway.  

[tacokick]

I mostly use it for tracking books and the occasional review not recommendations but I could see myself using it that way if it worked! Right now all that gets recommend to me is sci-fi/fantasy/historical fiction which are three genres I virtually never read.

[Nonny]

I've honestly never even looked at the suggestions Goodreads gives to me, because I just don't care what an algorithm thinks I want to read. That's not why I use Goodreads.

I use it to track what I've read and what I want to read (this book I'm hearing about on NPR sounds interesting; my eye doctor just recommended this series to me; my book club keeps bringing up this author; one of my favorite librarians recommends a specific title because she knows what else I've been reading; all my friends have read this I should read it too). I also use it for reviews, and I do get very little review engagement, which is fine because my reviews are really just for me about about 4-5 specific Goodreads friends anyway.

I do think the overall experience is worse on the app than on the desktop, but I've also learned that if I'm searching for something a little more obscure all I need to do is add in at least part of the author's name to my search and that will fix it. So for their Holiday Heart example, I searched for "Holiday Heart Marg" and it came right up.

[mrspez07]

I haven’t had any of the problems mentioned in the article. I don’t really use it for friend updates, and I do find those outdated.
I am somewhat annoyed that when you create new shelves, you can’t delete the generic to-read shelf and then books default to there on both the app and the paperwhite.
I think it is fine for tracking books and looking for books to add to the list. I get most of my recs from this board anyway ;-)

[AdaraMarie]

I like the desktop version but I've never liked the app in any of its iterations. I pretty much only use the app to pull up my to read list when I'm at the library or bookstore.
I have enough frinds and reviewers/bloggers that I follow that I sometimes learn about books I might like. I like to see what people I know have said about books I am interested in or have read and I like writing reviews for myself so I can remember books. I also really like organizing my books onto tons of shelves and that I can review the print and audio versions if a book separately.
I am almost never looking for recommendations but I never had a problem with that feature either. Maybe because I only look at recommendations based on shelves.

[CrazyLucky]

I really just use it to track books I've read and to keep a running list of books I'd like to read. It's interesting to me when a friend has read the same book, because I like to see their rating compared to mine. But that's all I want or need it to do. I've never had trouble finding a book through the normal search function. I'm not looking to build a community or get recommendations. It's really just a way to digitize my memory.

[wesleycrusher]

These seem to be the complaints from the article- Easier to find obscure books, better interface, Different rating system, better recommendation algorithm. I don't think the article was well written.

I have no issues with goodreads, but like PPs have said, the desktop version is better than the app. There are some things I can do on the desktop version that I just can't figure out how to do on the app, so I tend to go back and forth between the two (like changing a book's edition. I never figured out how to do that on the app). I used goodreads to keep track of my books I've read and ones that I want to read plus see what friends are reading. My feed is just books my friends are reading or want to read and we tend to have similar tastes so I get plenty of res there or from this board, but I have occasionally read something recommended to me from goodreads. Also I have used their book lists to get specific topics- like I recently looked up sci-fi romance list since I wanted to read a book in that genre. I have never thought I wanted or needed anything more from the site.

[ufcasey]

"Many now use it purely to track their reading, rather than get recommendations or build a community"

Well, yes. Goodreads was never going to be a book centric social media platform to rival faceBOOK. If you want the community, it is there though. Just write reviews for all your books (doesn't have to be long or anything particularly insightful), follow/friend request people who wrote the top reviews listed for that same book that had similar feelings as you, and then consistently comment on and like their reviews. In return, they will like and comment on yours and before you know it you have book friends! Voila!

But you can also just use Goodreads for finding books on your own to read - my favorite feature is 'Browse' -> 'New Releases'. It gives you all the new releases, by publication month, of all the authors currently on your shelves (both read and unread).

The app sucks.


ETA: If you want to be my friend on Goodreads, feel free to add me! www.goodreads.com/ufcasey

[tacokick]

Sept 22, 2020 8:36:29 GMT -5 ufcasey said:

"Many now use it purely to track their reading, rather than get recommendations or build a community"

Well, yes. Goodreads was never going to be a book centric social media platform to rival faceBOOK. If you want the community, it is there though. Just write reviews for all your books (doesn't have to be long or anything particularly insightful), follow/friend request people who wrote the top reviews listed for that same book that had similar feelings as you, and then consistently comment on and like their reviews. In return, they will like and comment on yours and before you know it you have book friends! Voila!

But you can also just use Goodreads for finding books on your own to read - my favorite feature is 'Browse' -> 'New Releases'. It gives you all the new releases, by publication month, of all the authors currently on your shelves (both read and unread).

The app sucks.


ETA: If you want to be my friend on Goodreads, feel free to add me! www.goodreads.com/ufcasey

I think initially it was pushed as sort of the reader alternative to Facebook. I have an author account and they would send me a lot of press releases/info about starting groups about my book(s) and heavily pushing the social aspect. It was really clunky so I never did it. Maybe if it worked better Goodreads would have ended up being more than a book tracker. I think there probably is a market out there for that.

[travella]

I use goodreads to track my books and occasionally to look at upcoming new releases when I'm looking to add to my to read list. Like others have said, I have heard complaints, but it works for what I use it for so I don't have any complaints.

[AJL]

I'm fine with the way Goodreads is set-up. Again, I'm like a lot of you. I use it to track the books I read. I use it to look up titles of books I've heard about to read the synopses. I don't mind that it recommends books that are out of the ballpark of what I usually read. Sometimes that yields a hidden gem. I guess I'm not really understanding what the problem is. It's not a social site for me. I don't interact in the groups or with other members on the site.

ETA: I had ZERO problem finding the book the article write said was nearly impossible to find on Goodreads. I just typed in the book author's last name and said book was the second choice. *shrug* Maybe she's not good at using a search engine?

[ssmjlm]

I just use Goodreads for tracking what I've read. I just wish I had known about it sooner so I could track my pre-kindle reads back when I would get books from the library.

I didn't realize it was supposed to be a facebook type competitior. It's not really setup for that at all as the groups are a weird mis-mash.

[expectantsteelerfan]

I'm wishywashy on Goodreads. Like so many others, I primarily use it to track the books I've read and keep a list of books I want to read. I enjoy reviewing the books I've read and then reading other reviews, which I can do without problem. But I also like seeing what my real-life friends are reading and what they thought of books, and this can go either way, mainly because sometimes Goodreads doesn't recognize other versions of the same book. So often I'll see a friend rate a book I KNOW I've read and reviewed, but Goodreads doesn't show them my review because it was a different version of the book (and I never pay attention to which version I'm reviewing when I search for a book). It also lets me add the same book multiple times accidentally.

I never really thought of Goodreads as a place to suggest books to read beyond me searching a book and reading reviews or seeing what my friends think, but the idea of a site like TheStoryGraph to generate meaningful suggestions intrigues me!