Goodreads Just Didn't Work For Me In 2018

Goodreads is great when I use it consistently. Unfortunately I fell out of the habit. I'm reflecting on why and how to get back into using the reading tracker website. Bonus: some talk about how Amazon freaks me out.

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[Frumious]

I am TERRIBLE at goodreads. It’s honestly always a resolution of mine to use it more but half the time I forget it exists and the other half the app just stops working???

[LetsReadSFF]

I feel your pain though I don't encounter the same situation. Somehow I've gotten to a point where I'm subconsciously meticulous about what gets updated. There's no way in hell I'll trust linked accounts and services to update my books and reading services for me. Saves me from double checking. Hope the next year saves you from those frustrations

[FinalBlowJoe]

My goodreads use has changed quite a few times over the years. I use it to help track what I read over time but not so much about potential want to read books anymore. I try not to use Amazon and don't do audiobooks, for now anyway, so the linking of the amazon empire is not something I'm too concerned about. That could change though.

[BookNookNoggin]

I used GR religiously because I am bad at keeping track of what I have read due to me reading so much. If I didn't use it I would be re-reading stuff. I could care less about reading challenges.

[jessicadifelice]

I am terrible at marking my audiobooks as read. I think one week I had listened to 4 novellas and completely forgot to track any of them...then had to go back and try to remember when I read them... I also forgot to put them in my spreadsheet haha. I also found I have too many things to track my books with. I have a LibraryThing account, and Goodreads, and a spreadsheet tracker, and then when I read a list off my TBR I have a word document I delete it off of. I think I'm going to try and tone down how I track my reading in 2019...and only use a couple things. Good luck next year with your reading!

[AlokTalekar]

goodreads app just sucks, at least on android - I use it as a read only thing, I use website for any input at all. Also I have never linked goodreads to amazon account, but they ended up forcing me to link my audible and amazon account - which has turned out to be useful, but I still have strong reservations about linking my goodreads to rest of amazon mothership.

For me goodreads is mostly for myself - keeping track of what I was reading, how my taste has evolved and what influenced me when. It is less about social sharing. I keep all my data public, but don't share every thought I had on the book.

Goodreads actually could create a really way way way better visualizations with all the data they had, and even for stuff that they already have you have to go down a big rabbit hole before you get there. Goodreads feed is also temporary - in these sense that they only keep the essential things like read status, dates, etc after a few weeks. (at least I can't find historical comments etc on my profile or on anyone elses). Page counts kinda suck - publishers deal with word counts only (and actually microsoft word's word count had started becoming a standard last I checked, as there are lots of nuances in word counting algorithms across document editors), and updating reading progress - if it happens automagically - I can understand that, but mannually doing that makes like zero sense to me as well. I do bulk update sometimes - but its for me more than the world at the end of the day.