Thoughts On Goodreads

I joined goodreads in 2008, two years after its creation. I don’t remember why, but my first book entries were of some books I’d read for college and a few others I owned. There were no further entries until 2012, and then I’d given up until now, when I filled out the rest of the books I’ve read since then (nearly a thousand).

I don’t read any of the reviews on goodreads. I’m not interested in the reviews, and my own are very short and to the point. I think I only read the reviews I see on Amazon because I am in the process of buying the book, and even though you can click a few buttons to buy a book through goodreads, it isn’t obvious and doesn’t seem convenient.

What I am interested in in goodreads is seeing what others have read. I like to see what my friends have read. Knowing someone read a book is like a review unto itself. Something about the book prompted them to read it, and if they left even a star review of the book then there may be something there. For those of us who read enough to join something like goodreads, we are constantly on the hunt for new interesting reads, well . . . for a good read.

I don’t like how difficult it is to find people to follow that you may not be connected to from other social media sites. I kind of want to know what books my professors are reading, what books my favorite (living) authors are reading, what books my favorite bloggers are reading. Goodreads is set up to see that kind of stuff easily, and it annoys me that a lot of the people who I can find don’t update their bookshelf.

So, even with the technology at our disposal today, and with a massively popular book website, I still can’t figure out what everyone’s reading without directly asking them.

Also, I can add a shelf to my bookshelf, something like: terrible reads. I can add a lot of books to that shelf, and if someone clicks on it they will see the list, but other than looking at each book review I did individually, or simply through seeing the book, I am not able to make any additional comment about why I added these specific books. In a similar vein, I cannot make a curated book-reading list for others without good explanations of beyond a shelf title as to why I am creating this list. I guess I can go to the lists option on the website and make my own list there, but will be it visible to friends and people I’m connected with? With the lists that are already created I cannot figure out who made them, which is important to me because I want to see what kinds of books they generally read, because it helps me to formulate in my head the kind of taste they have and how authentic their list may be.

I wish another site existed, one called smartreads, where the purpose and point is to find out what kind of excellent, top-shelf, diamond-in-the-rough books people, noted for their intelligence, are reading and enjoying. I want to know what top scientists are reading in their spare time, or scholars, or inventors and entrepreneurs, intellectuals of any sort. I say this because a lot of the top readers and reviewers I have browsed on goodreads all read graphic novels or the kind of light fiction you would expect to see with a Kindle Unlimited subscription. If you’re going to read 6,000 books, why do they all need to be pulp?

I suppose goodreads has its place, but the website hasn’t seemed to change or upgrade much at all from what I remember. I quick peruse on the internet wayback machine confirms my thoughts.

I’m not done with goodreads, there is still more for me to explore and connect with, such as the groups section. Overall, I still think the site lacks in allowing you to see what others are reading. Maybe I want to see what people are reading within 20 miles of my location, and I can connect with some of them and form an in-person book club based on our interests. I should also be able to click on a book I’ve read and discover others within X miles who have read the same book. I don’t see the harm in that.