2025 Goodreads Reading Challenge Update

~ Veselin ~ 2 Comments

Part of the reasons why I read so many books last year was that it was a shared experience, thanks to the Goodreads Reading Challenge. Several friends did it at the same time and I got inspired by their achievements. I would see people setting their annual goals, completing them, and would occasionally check their progress, motivating myself to read more.

Goodreads decided to revamp the reading challenge this year.

  • They removed any possibility to see other people’s reading challenge
  • They replaced the gallery of books with a simple list
  • They added a bunch of new challenges, monthly and genre-specific
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I think this series of changes highlights a common problem in software engineering, which is not seeing the product from the point of view of the people who use it:

  • Not seeing the friends’ challenges is not a problem if your Goodreads account has no friends who do the challenge or you don’t do it yourself. In that case other problems appear more prominent, like can we have a single address for the reading challenge? What should it be?
  • In case your personal challenge has some artificial data, like 3-4 books added for tests, it’s not a problem that the new list of books can only fit 4 books on desktop and is 95% white screen.
  • The artificial test account with 3 books would also only have 2-3 of the visible 7 months where we are challenged to read one book per month. It would look great, some challenges accomplished, other not accomplished. Less adequate if you read 5 or 10 books per month and have been consistent over a period of many years.

I hope Goodreads recognizes the issue and iterates on their mistakes. They could follow the example of the Reader Council and ask the community when things are not certain how people use the service.

I’m not yet sure an alternative to my usage of Goodreads exists. Tried Storygraph but it needs time to import my data. Also tried Bookwyrm but it didn’t quite work for me.

Part of what makes Goodreads great is the community – lots of librarians maintain the various editions. It might be difficult to replicate elsewhere.

The Waiting by Michael Connelly, Book Review

~ Veselin ~ Leave a comment

The Waiting is Michael Connelly’s 39th book from the Harry Bosch Universe. Renée Ballard from LAPD’s Open-Unsolved Unit is going to chase a number of different cases at the same time, with the help of Maddie Bosch. Two of the cases are serial killers. Harry Bosch also makes a brief appearance. The avalanche of cases is something we can imagine from an unit that digs into the past and the entire series is plausible. It’s very satisfying because you read about multiple resolutions throughout the book.

Renée Ballard is my current most favorite character by Michael Connelly. She’s experienced but impatient. Doesn’t shy away from yelling at people. Relies on others to do the job. She chills by surfing, which puts her in difficult positions from time to time, including in that book. It starts with the theft of her belongings while surfing. She has no superpowers and doesn’t rely on Deux ex machina to solve the cases. I like the whole setup.

This thriller gets an easy 5*/5 Goodreads rating. It will be a hard thing to read a better book in January. The bar is set high.

Night of the Dragon by Julie Kagawa, Book Review

~ Veselin ~ 10 Comments

Yumeko is a half-human half-fox teenage girl, gifted with the magic of illusion and trickery. She has the mission to bring a powerful scroll to safety. The scroll grants its owner a single wish, granted by the almighty dragon god, who can only be summoned once every 1,000 years. It was used to build or ruin empires, to give immortality, and to trap immortal creatures. However, over the last 2 books, the scroll was taken by an evil and long undead blood mage who wants to open the gates of hell. Yumeko and her friends will try to get it back.

This book is a LOTR-style romantasy where the entire magical system is inspired by Japanese folklore. No elves, or even kobolds. I didn’t tag the previous two books as romantasy because the love story was relatively insignificant and not out of the ordinary for fantasy books. However, this last part is all about characters doing things for each-other out of love and care. Yumeko is so nice that she can melt the hearts of demons.

5/5. Night of the Dragon is slightly less appealing to readers who aren’t into romantasy because some moments are cringe. I think the romance is tolerable.

The print quality is great and the series got its own shelf for now.

The real question for me is if I should keep reading Julie Kagawa. I’m not sure yet. It was a nice detour from the epic fantasy I usually read but another detour might be too much.