Week 4-Goodreads

I originally joined Goodreads more than five years ago and had been a faithful, avid user. I logged all my books, rated the ones I finished, created shelves and to-read lists, shared book recommendations, entered giveaways, and challenged myself to the yearly reading challenge. However, after GR was bought by Amazon, among other factors, I closed my account and transferred my entire log to another site (thankfully there was a time-consuming but easy method to import the lists). While GR is superior in its ease of use, app functionality, depth and breadth of books and users, I was reluctant to come back a few years ago. I set up the account mostly to share books with my sister, and until this week, my account has never seen much action. I do read reader reviews, but I hardly contribute anything, until now.

GR is a great site for bibliophiles. Not only does it help keep track of all the books read, but also helps by keeping a to-be-read list. I used to open up the to-read shelf every time I was in a bookstore or library to remind me what I was looking for, and inevitably, I would add more as I perused shelves. I also enjoy reading the reviews people write. I don't usually decide to not read a book based on a bad review (or several); I use GR in conjunction with reviews I read elsewhere, like Book Page, Shelf Awareness, NYT Book Review, etc.
GR is also fun for the reading challenge, has the fun giveaways that I never win, and is an easy way to keep track of what others (your friends) are reading. As I mentioned, my sister likes to send me updates and recommendations through GR rather than standard boring email or text.

I have over 600 books on my shelves at my usual book-tracking site, so I took about 60 random titles and rated them in GR for this assignment. Interestingly, the recommendations received were heavily based on just a few books I have read (or marked as to-read, for the to-read recommendations). What I like better are the lists in Listopia. I have used those lists to try and find new books to read that are similar to something I read, and it's fun to see how different books get lumped together by odd common threads.