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!

Or what book did you last close? :)

I'm curious to know about everyone's experiences with book-related social media content. Do they help you find books you love? Do you hate the "competition" of trying to meet reading goals on goodreads? Have you gone down a booktube or booktok rabbit hole and bought way too many books?

For me, I can't decide if these platforms are useful or a huge waste of time.

Goodreads: Sometimes I love it because it's such an easy way to track my reading. I also like to read through reviews after I finish a book, though I'm not sure it's a good use of my time. On the other hand, since it syncs with my facebook friend list somehow, I sometimes feel self-conscious about what I am reading. For instance, I will want to read a YA novel or a romance novel, but then I will think about certain friends and acquaintances who might judge me for reading something trashy instead of something more literary and I read something else instead.

Booktube: Discovering booktube in 2015 was actually what got me to start reading after a long phase where I completely stopped reading for fun. The downside is that hearing passionate people discuss books made me read things other people loved instead of what I loved. I was always fed videos of people talking about fantasy books and Brandon Sanderson. I like fantasy okay, but not as much as the people on booktube! I eventually became frustrated with booktube because 90% of the videos I was fed were either about YA or fantasy and I kept getting into reading slumps by starting long fantasy books I didn't really love.

Bookstagram: I started a bookstagram account and the act of announcing my TBR and writing weekly reviews made me read more books than ever before! The downside was that the actual time and effort required to photograph books, interact with people, and write reviews was significant and started to feel like work. I also felt like I wasted a large amount of time scrolling through posts and ads instead of actually reading.

Lastly, since it's insta, it feels like it turns into a looks/popularity contest sometimes. A lot of the really popular account have really beautiful influencer-looking people holding up the latest romcom from Book of the Month club and it starts to just feel really fake....

Booktok: I've never tried it....

I've thought about going totally off the grid and keeping a private reading journal, but I feel like I might need the outward accountability of something like Bookstagram or Goodreads to keep

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!

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!

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.

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

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 https://pastebin.com/iqfeznw5 to see it in action. Please note that you will need to have Tampermonkey Chrome/Firefox addon installed prior to installing the script.

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?

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

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

If you use the mobile app of Goodreads, you can sort the books you've read by "Number of Ratings" to see which book you've read has the fewest number of ratings, aka the most obscure/ least read by other goodreads users. It's a really interesting way to organize your shelves, and I'd love to hear others share what is their "least read" read book.

My bottom two are:

• Blaster Knuckle #1 by Shizuya Wazarai with 30 ratings. A manga about an African American traveling the antebellum south to murder KKK members disguised as monsters who eat former enslaved people...what a trip!
• Bombshell by James Reich with 35 ratings. A "feminist nuclear thriller" about a young woman on a vigilante journey to bring down the nuclear industry, which I personally loved and was shocked to see had been read by so few goodreads users.

What's yours? Happy New Year!

I‘ve only just created the group so it’s very bare, but I think this could be a good way to suggest books. This way we have the title, author, and synopsis all in one place. Just add your book to the bookshelf.

Goodreads Group

I don't know from where but I have developed a bad habit of compulsively reading book reviews. Only to find that many of the reviews are just plain ranting about some nonsensical comment the reviewer has about the content of the book.

It just leaves a bad taste in your mouth. I have decided to not read any review of the book until I finish one. This way I get laughs out of the reviewers who write almost whole essays about why they didn't like it.

Funniest ones are those which say the book can be summarized into one page or 40% of the book can be reduced. Why not get hired as an editor instead of writing angry reviews on amazon. Yeah captain obvious, you read the book and understand it well, it doesn't mean the book should be short. Every reader is different and understands the content differently.

What is the reliability of those reviews, I have personally found many books I enjoyed but have more of the bad reviews on these websites which allow just about anyone to be a book critic.

What is your opinion on it?

So last year I started reading "seriously" and have written down the books I've read in a note with their title and start and finish date. But that's a simple way of doing it since it says only the amount of books, be them of 200 or 900 pages.

Is there something that keeps track of the total pages read, average per day, dates, estimates etc and can add a to-read list etc?

I want to start reading the series, but I have seen some pretty scathing reviews on goodreads. Mostly they come from high brow intellectuals who critique the series as bland, generic rehashing of a more prominent fantasy series like Lord of the Rings etc.

Can anyone weigh in, where exactly is WoT in the fantasy series universe? Top of the crop? or down with the rest of the commercial chow?

Do any of you have a DNF shelf on your goodreads account? I’m thinking of making one because I keep redownloading books I never finished because I forgot I tried to read them at some point. Is there a way to do it so they don’t add to your counted read books?

I barely visit Goodreads because I don't have any friends on it. Maybe if I add some likeminded people, Goodreads would be more enticing?

My name over there is Greybeard Psychonaut. If anyone wants to add me as a friend, please go ahead or put your Goodreads screen name below for anybody else looking to expand their friend list.

Edit: Link to my profile

I don't know about you but most people in my life do not read romance books like I do. I get lucky to see a romance book in my Goodreads thread. Let's change that! This is a megathread for Goodreads usernames. Drop yours in a comment below and find others to follow in the comments. You can also add your favorite subgenres/pairings/tropes so that people can narrow down who they want to follow.

This is also a great opportunity to create a custom url so you can more easily share. Go to Goodreads -> Account Settings > Profile Information > Profile URL

Also, once you are friends with someone, you can compare bookshelves. So I am friends with u/mrs-machino and I can see that we share 150 books in common and our tastes are rated 90% similar. I can view the ones we have in common and see how she rated and compare it to how I rated. It's a great way to find someone with a similar taste as you and add their favorite books to your TBR.

Here's my profile. I read mostly light contemporary romance, all pairings. I also enjoy smutty fantasy/scifi/UF when in the mood.

Note: This is not a place for author profile links. That is self promo and will get you banned from our sub.

I use some combination of how much I enjoyed the book and how well-written I thought it was. I tried to pick examples that seem to come up here frequently.

An example of a 5 star would be East of Eden, which is beautifully written and kept me very entertained. I was disappointed when it was over.

Project Hail Mary was a 4 star because it kept me entertained thoroughly but the writing wasn't beautiful and I was ready for it to be over about 60% through.

On the Road was a 4 star as it was entertaining early, clearly iconoc, well-written but I kind of "got it" and could have done without the last third.

Recursion was 3 star as it did a decent job of entertaining me, but I just didn't think it was actually very "good."

Catcher in the Rye was a 2 star as I appreciated the book as iconic but just didn't care for the story at all.

What are your criteria? Are you just generally "I loved it" equals 5 stars? [Nothing wrong with that!!]

The poll has ended and The Queen of Blood by Sarah Beth Durst is our pick for Beginnings!

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

The Queen of Blood by Sarah Beth Durst

> An idealistic young student and a banished warrior become allies in a battle to save their realm in this first book of a mesmerizing epic fantasy series, filled with political intrigue, violent magic, malevolent spirits, and thrilling adventure > > Everything has a spirit: the willow tree with leaves that kiss the pond, the stream that feeds the river, the wind that exhales fresh snow . . . > > But the spirits that reside within this land want to rid it of all humans. One woman stands between these malevolent spirits and the end of humankind: the queen. She alone has the magical power to prevent the spirits from destroying every man, woman, and child. But queens are still just human, and no matter how strong or good, the threat of danger always looms. > > With the position so precarious, young women are chosen to train as heirs. Daleina, a seemingly quiet academy student, is under no illusions as to her claim to the throne, but simply wants to right the wrongs that have befallen the land. Ven, a disgraced champion, has spent his exile secretly fighting against the growing number of spirit attacks. Joining forces, these daring partners embark on a treacherous quest to find the source of the spirits’ restlessness—a journey that will test their courage and trust, and force them to stand against both enemies and friends to save their land . . . before it’s bathed in blood.

Bingo Squares

• Title of _ of _
• Bookclub!
• Forest Setting (HM)

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. Ad

How do you all use goodreads? I hope this is allowed on here as it does pertain to my goal of 52 books in a way. I have spent some time today scanning all my tbr from my shelves onto the app. I've never really used it before. I can see people have friends and follow others etc. Is this a good thing to do? Is it worth it? Or is it more a useful tracking tool? 🤔

Edit: This might be a wrong subreddit but it has everything to do with books and avid readers.

I use GoodReads to check out the ratings and book recommendations. But the website does not seem to be very user-friendly and feels so cluttered. I really want to manage my reading lists and such but the interface on the website is so terrible.

What do you think about the website? What is missing from the website and what should have been different? What are some good alternatives to GoodReads?

Hi do you use Goodreads? Was looking for people to follow and vice versa. Looks like not many people from my social media actively read books and update on Goodreads unfortunately. I like self help books and horror.