I'll be honest... I basically don't track my reading. There are enough metrics in my life that I don't have control over, that I don't feel it necessary or useful to apply a tracking to what I do in my spare time. I try to make sure I get the book club book read before the monthly meeting, and otherwise I guess the tracking is the pile of books in the TBR pile and the read pile (and what's on bookshelves. I figure if I don't remember a book well enough to recommend it to someone, it was probably fairly forgettable, and if I do it was probably pretty memorable and that's good enough for me!
this post was submitted on 15 Jun 2023
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Yeah this is me. I got enough shit to do besides having to track my media intake. Did that in the past with video games and film. It provided me no benefit and was just another chore to do at the end of the day. If others like doing so, go for it, just not a 'me' thing.
I read almost exclusively on Kindle, which integrates with Goodreads and updates when I’m done reading an ebook, so I still use Goodreads for that reason. I also manually track my reading in StoryGraph, though, which I like better with one exception: No ability to add quotes from books you’ve read. I really like sharing my favorite excerpts, so I miss that feature on StoryGraph.
Unfortunately Goodreads does not allow for multiple profiles on an account (as far as I can tell). My wife has been reading through dozens and dozens of books over the last couple years and linked my amazon account to goodreads, so I can't link my kindle there as well.
I just signed up for StoryGraph though, it looks promising, although it may be a pain in the ass to do everything manually.
The Storygraph is a fantastic goodreads alternative with way more stats and helpful info on your reading habits. It’ll import your goodreads history too!
I used to use Goodreads, but switched to StoryGraph at the beginning of the year, and haven't looked back. The only time I refer to Goodreads now is when I want to know if a book in a series can be read standalone, since that's often mentioned in their question/answer section for the book, and it saves risking spoilers by reading reviews.
Though that said, I've yet to come across a spoilery review (that wasn't indicated as such) on StoryGraph...
I looked at BookWyrm, and did set up an account on an instance, but I prefer StoryGraph.
ETA: I haven't really looked at the recommendations feature on StoryGraph, so I can't help you with how well that does or doesn't work. My TBR is way too long already...!
I don't really track my reading. Maybe I should have, but I never really saw the point. Besides, most of my reading predates the web. I've been reading since 1966. That said, I did a TON of book recommendations on Reddit at r/booksuggestions and r/SuggestMeABook. I ended up creating a Google doc to store the recommendations I wrote for re-use. That turned out to be a good idea; I separated the recs into genres, and polished them as I noticed mistakes or areas for improvement.
Eventually someone asked me to make that Google doc public, so I did.
Meanwhile I'm on BookWyrm. I was part of a group that left GoodReads when Amazon took over; we set up a community on Google Plus (RIP) to search for alternatives to GoodReads and Amazon (see what I mean about greedy corporations destroying one community after another?). We set up a research project to find and test replacement services. If BookWyrm had existed back then, it would have been far and away the best choice. It needs more development, but I'm willing to wait for that to happen. Meanwhile I'm having fun with it.
One thing for sure: I will NEVER trust a service owned by a plutocrat or corporation ever again.
I use a LibreOffice sheet for pending stuff, and as a form of control list for stuff I either recommend or not (which also indicates stuff I either completed or dropped).
Bookwyrm & Librarything. I've never used goodreads and am a Long time Library thing user. I like Bookwyrm for tracking ebooks and tend to use Librarything for physical books, I also use a specific language bookwyrm for tracking 2nd language reading
I discover recently Hardcover App. You can keep track of what you read, and what you want to read. Also, you can have a list of books owned. They have a matching system for books, based on your lists.
Goodreads, although if I can figure out the process of exporting my data over to Bookwrym then I'll likely do that.
You will need to export from Goodreads using a computer (go to My Books, then click on Import and export under Tools on the left). When you get a csv file from GR you can import it to Bookwyrm using:
I buy paper books and put them in my shelf. Now get off my lawn, damn kids!
I'm still using Goodreads, mostly because I read with ereaders, right now a Kindle and Kindle/Amazon are already getting that data.
I still use goodreads because I haven't managed the motivation to move to self hosting it yet.
I'm really bad at keeping up with it, though. It seems like half the time I go to add books I have like 20+ from 4-5 different apps to find and add.
Yeah, Bookwyrm is fun. It's pretty basic in terms of tracking compared to GR but works and I like that I can follow my friends from masto.
I found Bookwyrm to be too much work, because most of the books I read weren't on there so I have to manually add everything. Also the instance I was on was horribly slow.
That was my experience too. I often read 100+ books per year, and it’s just too much work to manually add every detail of half of those.
That's why I backed off one of my attempts to migrate off goodreads, too. Yeah, it was easy to export and easy to import the list of books, but when there's 100 of them that are horrendously wrong at the end of the process it's just too much work.
I'll wait to do that kind of work until I'm ready to fully self host so I can pick and choose what to include and how to structure and organize them all.
Oof that sounds like it could get tedious. I suppose this is something that might be solved as more people use it, and it builds up an internal catalogue of books?