If you’re not yet using Goodreads, I am here to tell you why you should jump on board today and change the way you manage your reading life! Chances are you may have never heard of Goodreads before, or maybe you have, but you don’t know what all the fuss is about. Goodreads describes itself as “the world’s largest site for readers and book recommendations. Our mission is to help people find and share books they love.” The key words here are website (or, if you prefer, yes, “there is an app for that!”), readers, love, and sharing. Basically, Goodreads is an online social reading community where you can keep track of what you have read & plan to read, share the experience of reading with others, and “meet your next favorite book!”
The Basics
Goodreads is accessible through its website or as an app, and is free to join & use. Once you are signed up, it is time to start putting books on your shelves! Everyone starts off with 3 shelves – read, currently reading, to-read – but you can add as many shelves as you would like. I have seen users create genre shelves, shelves for books that they have read in e-book or listened to by audiobook, shelves for books that they absolutely loved … and on the other hand, shelves for books that they couldn’t stand to finish. Your shelves are only limited by your imagination – they are there to function as you need them! Adding a book to a shelf is as simple as typing its title in the search bar and selecting the shelf you would like to place it on. Once you have read the book, you can give it a rating based on a 5-star system and write a review if you choose. One of the things that I love about Goodreads is being able to read others’ reviews on a book that I have just finished – especially if I hated the book! I am always happy to know that I am not alone in disliking a book. Which brings me to another great feature of Goodreads – each book is given an average rating based off of all the ratings the Goodreads community has given it. This is really helpful in getting a “quick feel” for a book – does the majority of the Goodreads community like this book, do they think it’s just “okay,” or should I probably avoid this one completely? Tracking what they have read, are reading, and would like to read, as well as rating and reviewing, are the most basic ways that Goodreads’ 40 million members are using the site, but there is so much more that you can do with it!
Special Features
Recommendations
I have already mentioned Goodreads’ ratings system, but I want you to know that it is not just used to tell the world how you felt about a particular book! Goodreads uses your rating to recommend titles that may be of interest to you. You can also customize your recommendations based off of your shelves or particular genres. For example, I have been really into the Suspense and Dystopia genres lately, so I have my Goodreads account set up to provide me recommendations based off of what is out there for those two genres.
Social Interaction
Goodreads is a social community and you can “make friends” with people, just like on Facebook or other social media platforms. These people may be your actual friends in real life or they may be people that you have never met before, but you’d swear that they are your best friends because your reading interests are so similar! Once you are friends with someone, you will automatically receive their reading updates in your newsfeed – books that they add to their shelves, their ratings and reviews, etc.
Lists
If you love lists, Goodreads has you covered. On Goodreads’ “Listopia,” there are lists for just about every reading topic you can imagine. Just to give you some examples – Books That Everyone Should Read At Least Once, Best Books of the 20th Century, The Movie Was Better than the Book, Couldn’t Put It Down, Judge a Book by Its Cover. Having trouble finding something to read? Go no further than Listopia. Browse the lists. Your “To-Read” shelf is guaranteed to grow! You can also create your own lists and share them with the Goodreads community!
Reading Challenge
Some of us like to set a reading goal for ourselves each year, and Goodreads has gotten in on the fun. Each year, users are invited to take part in the Reading Challenge. They can set a personal reading goal for themselves, and once completed, they receive a badge of honor on their profile stating that they completed their challenge. Goodreads gives you feedback on the status of your challenge as well – as you read books toward your challenge, a bar fills, showing what percentage of your challenge is complete. Goodreads also makes the Reading Challenge social by providing stats for the community. For example, for the 2015 Reading Challenge, there are 1,650,787 participants, with 91,079,901 total books pledged. The average Challenge has 55 books. So far, 22,457,879 total books have been read, and 4,376 challenges have been completed!
Quotes
Do you ever read a line in a book and love it so much that you want to write it down? Goodreads has a Quotes feature which allows you to save your favorite literary quotes to your account for safe-keeping! As you explore the Quotes section of the site, you may find that you are the first to enter a particular quote into Goodreads, or you may learn that you are not the only one who loves that quote!
Giveaways
Who doesn’t love free books? On Goodreads, you can enter drawings to win books – absolutely free! In the Giveaways section, publishers, authors, & others list the books that they are giving away – oftentimes these books are an advance copy, which means you get to read them before anyone else! Entering the drawing is as simple as clicking a button to confirm your address (if you win, they need to know where to ship the book!) Goodreads only asks that if you win, that you please write an honest review for the book after you read it. I actually won one of these Giveaways before, which was really cool, and it is as simple as it says. I didn’t have to do anything aside from confirming my address and then enjoying the book!
There are many other ways to get involved in Goodreads, as you will soon find out once you hop on over to the website and join! You can spend hours exploring the website and still have plenty left to discover – there are always new books to meet on Goodreads! I hope that you enjoy Goodreads and that it helps you revolutionize your reading life!