The Book Thread Book • Page 162

Goodreads is still a really really bad app. I wish there was an app as good as letterboxd for books

 

yeah 100% agree. I really just use it as a point of record at this point. Until they have actual competition it won't improve. It took them years just to update the book details page and I actually prefer the original page

 

what's bad about Goodreads?

 

Biggest things I can think of are how they push recommendations (they’re trash and usually just focused on popularity or have absolutely nothing in common with the comparison), and the reviewing system (not unique to Goodreads). Also, the feed and social aspect lacks quite a bit for me personally.

 

Maybe the interface could be improved and there could be better protection against bots and review bombers. They could expand the community aspect of it. Their algorithm kinda sucks (the recommendations they give me range from perfect to baffling). I also think they could vastly improve the process for adding books if you're an author. All that said, I don't expect anything super high-tech when it comes to GoodReads. I appreciate it for what it is and does the trick for me, which is logging and rating the books I read; as well as displaying my own books and giving them visibility to readers.

 

I'm in the process of importing my entire reading history into Goodreads, and it is one of the buggiest sites I've ever spent this much time on.

 

It's just very dated and clunky. It seems like there's a lot of issues with data -- like right now, I'm in the middle of two Kindle books, and instead of syncing my progress, it marked both as read. That may be a Goodreads issue or a Kindle issue, but either way, same company.

It feels like Amazon is not interested in making it a platform to encourage reading and community, just a way to market popular books

 

Give us half stars, GoodReads.

 

Yes! This is the big reason I like StoryGraph

 

Literally came here to say this lol - I don’t use goodreads really for anything beyond just tracking my books read so it serves what it needs to do for me, but would LOVE half stars.

So many 3.5 books out there getting 3 starred

 

Just finished The Shards by BEE and… it might be my second favorite book from him, which is wild to say. I really loved it, definitely his best writing since American Psycho.

 

I'm addicted to buying books in the $1-3 Kindle daily deals. Not great when I only manage to read about one per month

 

I am reading Rabbit, Run by Updike and not enjoying it very much ~25% in. Does it get better? Are the other books in the series that won the Pulitzer better?

 

Finally purchased Someone Who Isn’t Me. Stoked

 

I was gonna buy Geoff’s book at Furnace Fest but $40 for a paperback is criminal.

 

https://asterismbooks.com/product/someone-who-isnt-me-geoff-rickly
25 shipped!

 

Recently began reading the Lord of the Rings. Finished Fellowship last week. "Book 1" was alright. The chapters dedicated to Tom Bombadil and the stuff at weathertop were good, but overall I greatly enjoyed the film to the book for "book 1". "Book 2" of fellowship was much better. Kind of odd where the book ended though, once again I thought the film did a better job at the end.

 

A thing to remember with LOTR is that publishers made it a trilogy. Tolkien wrote it as one book. So all the splits are arbitrary.

 

Just started Damned by Palahniuk. Pretty fun so far!

 

Yeah I get that, especially from the POV of Tolkien, but the films did a great job of changing the order of events such as Boromir dying at the end of the fellowship film and then Frodo leaving. Emotionally I think those beats work better in the order they take place in the films.

I'm about to start reading two towers in a couple days so I'm looking forward to finding out how the sequence of events originally were in the book.

 

The thing that jumped out to me last time I read them was the main RotK narrative is like 100 pages shorter than Fellowship or Two Towers, when you exclude the appendixes. I hadn't noticed that before

 

I didn't know either. Just from the width of the books it seems like fellowship is a bit longer than two towers so for ROTK do be even shorter is a surprise since its the longest film

 

Wife and I are planning to read The Chronicles of Narnia this year

 

Some really good stuff in that series, but the last book gets very weird (not in a good way).

 

I detoured to a non-fiction for a bit to pallet cleanse. I’m about 100 pages into Alan Shipnuck’s golf book about LIV vs. PGA. If you’re a golf fan, a good read so far.

A goal I have this year is to read The Stand. I don’t usually do well with really long books as what I’m exclusively reading, so I may just dedicate some time each month in chunks and bounce around to other stuff.

I also did the first three Dark Tower books. I’d like to continue that. So much to read, so little time.