Same as the letterboxd thread. Goodreads is kinda shit and wonky and amazon owns it but whatev.
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this is a good idea
Meeee
i forgot i had one!
i remember making someone really mad with my john carter of mars book review
anyway i have a stack of books i need to read maybe this will help
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so this isnāt goodreads, but i got on thestorygraph which is basically a goodreads alternative, independently owned, the pitch is they focus a lot more on readership, recommendations, your reader profile (stats etc) and community (reviews, challenges). the business model is a paid pro account similar to letterboxd.
it seems a lot lot better tbh? altho still some basic UI stuff I would like to see fixed
The StoryGraph, A Goodreads Competitor, Is Nadia Odunayoās Passion & Business (bustle.com)
anyways hereās my profile, add me and letās be friends yeah
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Tempted to use this, I just like websites like that and after (happily) losing access to my Goodreads account I went to LibraryThing which is just too much. Hard to tell what having an account on that website looks like though, they donāt really surface any bit about its usability without having you make an account and sign in. Hmm.
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i have a librarything and a goodreads but i donāt keep up with either tbh. just a mess really.
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itās pretty straight forward, itās kind of like letterboxd, you just add all the books youāve ever read and then (the cool part) it spits out stats for you about what you prefer. thereās an aggregated database of book length, pacing, āmoods,ā etc.
if you select a book as ācurrently readingā then change it to āreadā it will log that as a completed attempt with the date you finished. (you can go back and edit afterwards) and you can leave a star review, tags, content warnings, etc.
you can wishlist books as āto readā and then thereās several tools to filter and search your āto-read pileā.
thereās also user-created āreading challengesā which are a community feature, basically like little reading quests you can do and check off each one as you go. e.g. if you want to read every Hugo award winning novel from 2000-2021, itāll give you a little checklist.
I think on the book discovery side of things, itās pretty impressive with recommendations.the part i find annoying is the way it splits out different editions of a book, it should really aggregate them better as a UX thing. Another UX issue is that it takes way too many clicks to add books to challenges.
They also donāt have great tools to spotlight user reviews of books. If they do a better job with reviews Iām hoping it can be like the Letterboxd of books, but that depends on the community as much as anything. I notice the culture of book people seems likeā¦ not to write like a literature critic, but instead to write like youāre writing a blog post. iām generalizing though.
hereās their dev roadmap, I donāt really understand most of it but I hope theyāll prioritize some of these things. The StoryGraph Feedback
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I realize a lot of book lovers really want a website to track which books they āownā - like thereās some prestige in owning bound paper - thatās really not a thing I care about for this, for me itās really about finding good criticism and thinking about art. I hope there can be a website that prioritizes that aspect of literature
OOh thanks for taking the time to show me whatās on the other side of the signup wall. Iāll make an account as this just sounds nicer than LibraryThing, which is def for those book owners and library collectors out there. Way too power user for me.
Yeah this is a bit disappointing to me too. Book reviews and criticism seem to have adapted to the post-box format of blog or social media sites in the most whiny and unfocused way. Most reviews you see on those places feel like people ranting even when they are ambivalent or in love with the work. Itās like they have no sense of audience and so they donāt care to communicate anything really. For some philosophy books and non-fiction I have found this is a little bit different, but basically all fiction user reviews suck. Thereās that popular format on goodreads where people break up really long and terribly written sentences with cringey office gifs, which no doubt evolved from tumblr.
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itās funny bc most tumblr longposts I read are significantly superior to the average internet book review
I donāt know if movie people feel a stronger sense of āaudienceā because people actually read reviews to figure out whether to watch a movie. it seems like the critical culture is much more flourishing there. whereas thereās a bajillion books coming out every day and the peak problem is discoverability, which maybe incentivizes the gush/rant style of writing.
i wonder if the reviews for classic literature are like this too. I actually got a lot more proper reviewing out of this reddit post about classic SFF (hereās one about helicopter story) compared to the actual book sites.
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I think you are right about discoverability really stifling user review writing. And no disrespect to tumblr meant, the form just seems so strongly linked in my head. I am lucky to have a friend or two who is really into one of the kinds of fiction I like, and another who can speak thoughtfully about any book heās given to read even if he doesnāt like it. Between them and the books thread here and recs from random directions, I somehow find good books to read. I really like the effort posts we see in the books thread here!
I made an account. Add me if youād like!
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