Do you use Goodreads or something similar like Fantastic Fiction?

  • gabe [he/him]@literature.cafeM
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    1 year ago

    I use storygraph and love it, but hate the centralization of it. I like bookwyrm, but unfortunately there isn’t really any iOS apps (or any apps) available for it. The mobile site is great and is able to function really well as a PWA iirc but the app issue is my biggest barrier personally right now. It’s a matter of someone who’s willing to make an app at this point.

    I will say, I am currently tinkering with bookwyrm and potentially setting up an instance for literature.cafe users (and potentially others in the lemmyverse). It requires a bit of tinkering to get working right now, but we will see.

  • Rottcodd@literature.cafe
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    1 year ago

    I’ve never really understood the appeal. Goodreads is a pretty good source for synopses, and IMO that’s it. The reviews are mostly shit, the ratings are useless and the recommendations are pedestrian at best.

    If book sites were restaurants, Goodreads would be McDonalds.

  • Drusas@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    I’m a huge reader and I’ve never been a fan of Goodreads. I don’t know anybody who is or has been.

    • gabe [he/him]@literature.cafeM
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      1 year ago

      It was good for the time before it was bought by Amazon. Amazon has a habit of buying up everything book related and if they don’t see a potential to squeeze profit from it they will just abandon it.

      They own the top level domains .book and .read and have been in existence since 2015. They do not allow anyone to register with those domains years after paying to own them. No one is able to register. If .read was actually purchasable this site would likely be called lemmy.read :(

  • _ed@sopuli.xyz
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    1 year ago

    Bookwyrm here. Mostly for reaching reads and the occasional recommendation.

    • state_electrician@discuss.tchncs.de
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      1 year ago

      I tried Bookwyrm and other alternatives. As awful as Goodreads is on mobile, it still works better for me than anything else I’ve tried. Recommendations through what friends read are a huge thing and also so, so many books missing.

  • CaptObvious@literature.cafe
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    1 year ago

    I may have an account there from years (and years and years) ago. Haven’t logged in since creating it. I just don’t see the point. Maybe a decentralized alternative would make more sense.

  • regalia@literature.cafe
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    1 year ago

    I’ve never used Goodreads, I usually get my book recommendations from YouTube channels when I’m watching videos about other books or miscellaneous stuff.

  • jiang@literature.cafe
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    1 year ago

    no use goodread, we have a similar website in china called douban (it seems like goodread + imdb because users can post about movies they have watched). similar situation. then i heard about bookwyrm and quickly move to bookwyrm for my read memos.

  • Eq0@literature.cafe
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    1 year ago

    I use Goodreads but not for it’s intended purpose. I just like keeping track of what I have read through the years, so it’s my personal reading history. I also rate almost everything I read, to compare with the global rating.

    I created the profile because of this other website: novelty-insights.com (sorry, I don’t know how to make it a link)

    if you have a Goodreads account, you can export your account data and upload them to novelty insight, it will give you some stats on your reading habits. It helped me notice some bias I have in my reading. Check it out!

    • BrikoX@lemmy.zipOP
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      1 year ago

      I used to use Goodreads for keeping track of what I read/listen to, but with their latest redesign it was becoming unusable. I then moved to Fantastic Fiction, but they lack some basic functionality and their catalogue is very incomplete. BookWyrm is fediverse alternative, but it also lacks some basic features I need.

      So now I just host my own database with a simple website and a crawler to scrape the metadata from other sources and keep everything to my own liking.