something i’ve noticed on goodreads is that when a review of a book is negative, it’s really negative. out of interest, i went to look at the reviews of a book called beautiful boy, a book lent to me by a friend. i’m still in the middle of reading so i haven’t formed my thoughts on it yet completely, but i can understand why it might rub people up the wrong way.

however, one of the reviews that came up was so bad, you’d think the author had performed some sort of atrocity against the reviewer’s family in a past life. it wasn’t really anything constructive, it was basically just trash talking. it’s not the first of it’s kind that i came across, i wish it would be though. don’t get me started on the gifs.

i can’t be the only one to hold onto this sentiment, right?

Does anyone else have this sentiment? It is really hard to decide what to read based on the score and reviews there. Anything gory, strange or with controversal themes gets a low score. On the other hand fantasy, magical realism nad YA books are overrated in their score. What is good a horror book with a very low score?

I have a couple of questions.

As a new user on Goodreads, a website that receives 80 million views a MONTH, I'm having a hard time figuring out why people love this platform so much.

1. What do you love most about Goodreads?

2. What would you change about Goodreads? Is there something that is missing?

3. If you don't use Goodreads, what do you do to track your books? How do you find book recommendations?

I like the platform enough. I've started a reading challenge and I love that I can put my books onto their own shelf and connect with friends but it seems like it's missing something that I can't put my finger on. Thanks!

Is there any book that you would give 5 stars but for which the general consensus on Goodreads places it in the "score under 4" category? And if yes, what is this book and why do you think it didn't get the feedback it deserved in your opinion?

i have this thing where i unconsciously give books a higher rating when i rate them right after i finish them. i think that stems from me getting really attached to the book characters of whichever book i’m reading and then just rating the book based on that ‘attachment’. for example, i rated ‘we were liars’ with a 5/5 on goodreads, but then once i thought about it i was like ‘hmm wait is this actually a book i would reread or one i liked THAT much’? because i did like it yk but it wasn’t really a 5/5 read, more of a 3.5-4/5 one. bfkdkdjdd and even when i review them which is not that often but like whenever i do i more often than not eventually change my mind once i’ve really thought about them. weird.

Hope this is allowed… but I would really like to have more friends on the goodreads app, mostly so that we can see what each other is reading and get some new book ideas. I look at my feed on the app and it’s just… nothing.. my only friend on there is my mom and she’s not very active.

Anyway! A little about me - I’m 23, female, and work in technology.. I love to read classics, science fiction, fantasy, and especially dark fiction and books about robots/AI. But I’ll read pretty much any genre.

If anyone’s interested please message me!

Edit: y’all are awesome! I’ve sent a friend request to everyone who’s commented and will do for anyone else who comments. :)

Sorry to hate on an author so hard; I don't usually like to hate on strangers, but I'm so confused with this one. How does LJ Shen have such high ratings with so many ratings and reviews on Goodreads? Is it just because she's on Kindle Unlimited? Or is she an author people find especially easy to accurately self select into or out of reading?

I've given 2 of her books honest tries, Vicious (because it's the most popular book of hers, and I love bully romances usually) and Angry God (because I thought maybe I might understand the characters in Vicious better once they were living their HEA), and I just don't get the hype:

1. The writing quality is pretty terrible. Imo, there's a big womenwritingmen vibe to her male POVs. And her sentence structure gets very repetitive.
2. The characters are ridiculously melodramatic and childish. In no world do I believe that Vicious is an adult man, much less a highly successful lawyer. He acts more like a petulant teen's fantasy of a successful adult than an actual successful adult.
3. She doesn't give her mc's much reason to get together beyond that they think each other extremely hot. Even in Angry God, I didn't understand why the mc's in Vicious were together.
4. This is petty, but I can't take the name HotHoles seriously. It sounds like a nickname an older person would think is cool but actual teenagers would be completely embarrassed by.

There's not much point to this except that I was convinced by recs to give LJ Shen another try, and I'm once again annoyed that and baffled at how she's so popular and well rated when I feel that there are plenty of other better writers and books that are not as well known and/or as well rated. What am I missing that so many other readers seem to get with LJ Shen?

Edit: Holy crap, thank you all so much for your responses! I'm learning so much, and will reply to individual comments slowly. But I just wanted to first edit here to say a general thank you all for making me feel like I'm not alone and crazy with my thoughts on LJ Shen's writing and characters!

Also I'm learning so much about writers' PR teams (I didn't know these existed beyond what the publisher assigns an author of theirs) and ARC reviewers (I always just assumed these were skewed a bit on the positive side, but didn't realize authors actually had rules around reviews.) Thank you all for the education!

In a quest to de-Amazon my life (as well as trying to generally degoogle, etc), I am looking for an alternative to goodreads.

I’ve seen a few apps on the App Store.

StoryGraph, Reading List, Tsundo, and NextRead.

Has anyone used these services/apps and what do you think of them? You could also suggest a service I didn’t list here.

I think it would be a nice conversation to have.

I just finished Best Served Cold and was poking around at the next books for reading order, page count, and a few details that would hopefully help snap the standalones together in my brain. On Goodreads, I was reading the description and stumbled upon this final line:

>This novel also represents the return of Logen Ninefingers, one of Abercrombie's most beloved characters.

I have no idea what happens in The Heroes, but last I heard, Logen was "maybe dead, maybe not". Any way we could get this changed so future people don't make the same mistake I did?

Or what book did you last close? :)

Hi everyone! This is another of our yearly wrap up threads, though it's more looking forward to next year.

Goodreads is very popular on the sub and in the reading world in general, so if you have an account and want to link up with other people on the sub, post it here! It's another good way to keep yourselves and others accountable while also making some new online friends. I also add a bunch of books to my tbr there because it allows for longer reviews.

Here’s mine: https://www.goodreads.com/rpych2

I prefer sci-fi, fantasy, and historical fiction but I’m not picky about my genres. I also love talking about books so shoot me friend request/message if you want!

Other than it's being owned by amazon. And I don't like how they removed the API.

I personally just want to track books I have read, want to read, and dropped. Don't really care about the social media or review aspects. Used to use amazon wishlist but they like to remove items. So I got a lot of "no longer available" item. Which got annoying real fast. Especially when you have a lot of obscure/out-of-print/non-English books in your list.

I wish we have a wiki-like database. Like The Movie Database (TMDB) but for books, where users can edit the info, editions, titles, etc. edit: I guess Open Library by Internet Archive is one such project. But it's in such a messy state right now.

It doesn't happen on IMDB, but on Goodreads it happens all the time. Some twerp who wants you to read their awful gif laden review and lulls you in by not posting a spoilers tag to limit their views...and then go and spoil something hugely important on the second line of the review.

What's even more annoying is that I cannot stop reading the bloody things. Argh!

Here's the thread where you can post your Goodreads profile so people can add you as friends. Just post a link to your profile or your username in the comments! You can also find friends on Goodreads when you join our Discord!

Archived Threads:

• 1st
• 2nd
• 3rd
• 4th
• 5th
• 6th
• 7th
• 8th
• 9th
• 10th
• 11th

Ich habe gerade eins bis zur Hälfte gelesen und finde es langatmig und zu fachlich für einen Roman, kann mich nicht dafür begeistern und würde die Zeit lieber in ein anderes Buch investieren. Aber wie trage ich das bei GoodReads korrekt ein? Es gibt ja nur „Read“ oder „Want to read“.

EDIT:

Habs jetzt herausgefunden - ich musste erst das DNF-Regal auf exklusiv setzen, damit es als aktueller Lesestatus akzeptiert wird. Danke für die Mithilfe :)

Do you know why this is happening and what can I do to change it? It’s really frustrating.

I'm wondering how many of you use good reads to see if you'll read a book or not?

I normally go to good reads to see reviews & ratings for books I would like to read. I sometimes find myself being put off, because it's got a 3.5/4 stars rating. But I also feel that good reads is something to be taken with a pinch of salt.

It's weird because I know I'm probably missing out, but then I don't want to waste my time on a book that's got 3.5 stars.

This just seems like a rant now... I can't be alone in this.

The poll has ended and Catfishing on CatNet by Naomi Kritzer is our pick for Best Friends!

Come join us! If anyone is interested in being the discussion leader I am taking volunteers.

Catfishing on CatNet by Naomi Kritzer

> How much does the internet know about YOU? > > Because her mom is always on the move, Steph hasn’t lived anyplace longer than six months. Her only constant is an online community called CatNet—a social media site where users upload cat pictures—a place she knows she is welcome. What Steph doesn’t know is that the admin of the site, CheshireCat, is a sentient A.I. > > When a threat from Steph’s past catches up to her and ChesireCat’s existence is discovered by outsiders, it’s up to Steph and her friends, both online and IRL, to save her.

Bingo Squares

• Mystery
• Bookclub (this one!)
• Found Family

I will link to each of these discussions on Reddit on the r/Fantasy Goodreads Group and in the monthly book club hub thread (see the Megathread for a link) so if you read the book later in the month, or you miss the day we post the topics, you can find them easily (and each post will also link to the others for the month).

If you are not a member of our r/Fantasy Goodreads Group, you can join. Added advantage of joining? You can connect with more r/Fantasy members and check out what they are reading! (Stop by the Introduce yourself post to see who is who.)

So, who's planning on joining in? Anyone interested in leading book club for either this or any upcoming month?

Have any questions about it? Ask here!

Have you read it already and want to convince others to read it? Leave a comment to help sway those undecideds! Also, leave a comment to help me with Bingo squares, please.

Happy Reading!

Midway Discussion - February 14th

Final Discussion - February 28th

January nominations will be February 17th.

Hello everyone,

I created a tampermonkey script for adding inline Goodreads ratings to Audible sales, wishlist, library and audiobook page (currently works only for US Audible and in beta mode).

You can install the Tampermonkey script at below link to see it in action. Please note that you will need to have Tampermonkey Chrome/Firefox addon installed prior to installing the script.

1. https://pastebin.com/Bh2fgiY0 (v1.3)
2. https://pastebin.com/N8EPbYJt (v1.2)
3. https://pastebin.com/iqfeznw5 (v1.1)

Sample screenshot at https://imgur.com/a/yyrOQAc.

As we approach the end of the year, wondering if anyone else out there has a discrepancy between how many books make it onto your GoodReads profile and how many just take up free real estate in your brain??

Personally, my GoodReads reading challenge for 2021 says I’ve read 64 books … my actual total is 85. I’m pretty proud of my 64, while also being slightly bashful about the other 21 - the mafia, monster, dark, alien smut I don’t want the people in my life to know about 🤣

I’m curious - do y’all own your smut? Hide it? Flaunt it?

Just thought I'd share this Goodreads dataset here. It took me quite a lot of internet sleuthing to find an interesting, complete and large dataset to practice machine learning and more specifically recommender systems.

This data was originally pulled from Goodreads in 2017 by Zygmunt Zając . It contains detailed metadata information for 10 000 books (sorry about the typo in the title), as well as 6 million individual numerical ratings collected from 53 000 users. There is no demographic information available for users, but the different files included in the release form an interesting basis for a recommender system.

I have released an expansion pack of sorts for this dataset, that adds book descriptions, genres and other features, enabling the use of various NLP strategies. See here for the augmented dataset. Cheers.

Howdy!

I recently set up my author profile on GoodReads, and was wondering if anyone had advice for operating the platform as an author. Be it tips to help grow a following, taboos to avoid, etc.

I've used Goodreads for years, and over the last year, started moving my books over to Notion because I wanted more control over how I organize the books I read. However, after a year of experimentation, I've sort of come to the conclusion that keeping a Notion database with every book I want to read isn't sustainable when saving a book is done with a click in Goodreads (and I have over 300 at the moment!).

I'm thinking about continuing to use Goodreads as my sort of massive to-read/book discovery platform, and then creating a smaller database of books on Notion of books I'm currently reading/planning to read in the near future. Just interested to see how everyone else does it and if you use both or only one of the platforms to organize your books?

Every year, if you mark the read date, Goodreads gives users a list of their books for the year laid out with some interesting states. You can see yours by going here: https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_in_books/2021

And you can share it with us. If you look at someone else's Year in Books page (like mine below), and click the "Get Your Year in Books" banner at the top, you will get a working shareable link. Or steal it from the twitter share button. Or you can hit "see previous year" and then "see next year" to get the shareable public link. The the thing to look for is that it will have a long number at the end of the URL after the "/2021" Here's mine:

https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_in_books/2021/15431237

This is usually a fun thread every year where we can find some interesting new books...just look at your link and make sure it's the second one with the long number at the end otherwise people will just see their own when they click it.

Hello everyone,

I use Goodreads. I have for years now and have no problem with it. I'm looking to see if there are any other sites like Goodreads. I recently received an email from somewhere talking about a different site that is similar but can't find it now.

Do you use any other site besides Goodreads and if so, what is it?

Thanks!

Hi all,

Over the past couple of years, I have started tracking and reviewing my reads through Goodread, however, I have a major gripe with the toxic and puerile comments that often seem to make it to the top of the comment sections.

It seems like the most controversial, attention-seeking reviews get the most attention, filled with comments like "lmaoooo 😂😂👏👏👏" rather than ones that provide a genuine critique. Also, the design of the page is pretty antiquated.

Could anyone recommend a couple of alternatives? Which are your go-to sites for reading and submitting reviews?

Thanks.

For the ones that don't know, the winners were just announced. Personally, I don't think they have any true validity. It's a popularity contest that doesn't take in consideration the quality of the books. You can usually tell who's going to win before hand. There are certain authors that whenever they show up you know that they are going to take the cake (looking at you, Sara J. Maas).

But, I'm a bit of an hypocrite because I'm still glad that Crying in H Mart won the best memoir category, it was amazing.

I usually just use Goodreads to organize stuff I read. I like to write personal reviews that I can visit later on to find out what my thoughts were right after finishing the book. That, and the yearly wrap up.

Happy new year y’all!

Having failed my 40 books goal by 16 last year, I decided to go with 35 (totally arbitrary lol) fo this year’s challenge. I was wondering what’s your reading goals this year if you have one and want to share?

Time to Vote in the February 2022 Book of the Month Poll. The poll is open until January 26, 2022 11:59PM PDT. If you are not a member of our r/Fantasy Goodreads Group, you will need to join. Added advantage of joining? You can connect with more r/Fantasy members and check out what they are reading! (Stop by the Introduce yourself post to see who is who).

Also, be sure to check out this year's 2021 Bingo card, still plenty of time to join in. Read (or skip) to the end to help select the March theme!

This month's theme is Best Friends. or Besties if I am trying to be cute about it.

Catfishing on CatNet by Naomi Kritzer

>How much does the internet know about YOU?
>
>Because her mom is always on the move, Steph hasn’t lived anyplace longer than six months. Her only constant is an online community called CatNet—a social media site where users upload cat pictures—a place she knows she is welcome. What Steph doesn’t know is that the admin of the site, CheshireCat, is a sentient A.I.
>
>When a threat from Steph’s past catches up to her and ChesireCat’s existence is discovered by outsiders, it’s up to Steph and her friends, both online and IRL, to save her.

Bingo Squares

• Mystery Plot
• Found Family (?)

The Blue Girl by Charles de Lint

>Seventeen-year-old Imogene's tough, rebellious nature has caused her more harm than good—so when her family moves to Newford, she decides to reinvent herself. She won't lose her punk/thrift-shop look, but she'll try to avoid the gangs, work a little harder at school, and maybe even stay out of trouble for a change.
>
>But trouble shows up anyway. Imogene quickly catches the eye of Redding's bullies, as well as the school's resident teen ghost. Then she gets on the wrong side of a gang of malicious fairies. When her imaginary childhood friend, Pelly, actually manifests, Imogene realizes that the impossible is all too real. And it's dangerous. If she wants to survive high school—not to mention stay alive—she has to fall back on the skills s

Every time award season comes around, I'm interested in what kind of data I can see about the awards and what they might be saying about trends/interests. The Goodreads Choice Awards for best fantasy novels includes twenty books that you can see here.

Since Goodreads already includes a ton of information in one spot and I didn't have to go digging for more, I thought I'd pull together some data about the nominated books.

Note: I'm not making any judgments about the quality of the books nominated, whether they should win/lose, or whether another book deserves to be on the list instead. I also make no claims about the accuracy of the data here - it's just something I put together for fun and thought I would share it.

Author

Pronouns (based off their bio)

• She: 16
• He: 3
• They: 1

New Authors

Six of the books nominated seem to the first book published by the author:

• Heather Walter (Malice)
• Jennifer Saint (Ariadne)
• C.L. Clark (The Unbroken)
• Shelley Parker-Chan (She Who Became the Sun)
• Hannah F. Whitten (For the Wolf)
• Ava Reid (The Wolf and the Woodsman)

Publication

Month Published

• February: 2
• March: 2
• April: 2
• May: 3
• June: 5
• July: 1
• September: 3
• October: 2

Publisher

• Ace Books: 1
• Atria Books: 1
• Bloomsbury Publishing: 1
• Blue Box Press: 1
• Del Rey/Del Rey Books: 3
• Flatiron Books: 1
• Harper: 1
• MCD: 1
• Orbit/Orbit Books: 4
• Simon Schuster: 1
• Tor Books/Tordotcom: 5

Reception

Rating

• Average Rating: 4.06
• Lowest Rated: 3.62 (The Wolf and the Woodsman)
• Highest Rated: 4.42 (The Last Graduate)

Overall Ratings

• Average Times Rated: 21911
• Fewest Times Rated: 2914 (The Unbroken)
• Most Times Rated: 195465 (A Court of Silver Flames)

Average Ratings per Month Since Publication

• Average Times Rated: 4079
• Fewest Times Rated: 364 (The Unbroken)
• Most Times Rated: 21718 (A Court of Silver Flames)

Overall Reviews

• Average Times Reviewed: 3544
• Fewest Times Reviewed: 780 (The Book of Magic)
• Most Times Reviewed: 25208 (A Court of Silver Flames)

Average Reviews per Month Since Publication

• Average Times Reviewed: 751
• Fewest Times Reviewed: 109 (The Unbroken)
• Most Times Reviewed: 2801 (A Court of Silver Flames)

Tags

• Fiction: 20 (duh)
• Fantasy: 20 (duh)
• Adult: 19
• Romance: 12
• LGBT: 10
• Fantasy > Magic: 9
• LGBT > Queer: 8
• Hist

Link to see the results

I was really curious to see how the categories compare, cause the difference between 1st and 2nd place is so stark for fantasy, so here:

I may be wrong, but I think the totals include votes and books from both rounds, not just the finals, so books in the final might have 2 votes each.

(ratings mostly rounded down due to lazyness except where they got really close)(oh an ratings means people who've left a star ratings)

Best Fantasy