Tag: Goodreads

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
Screenshot
Screenshot
Screenshot

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.

Mind Storm by Andrew Greene

~ Veselin ~ 1 Comment

The prettiest cover from the first 6 books I purchased during the book fair is already on the “read” bookshelf. It’s the second book I read this year that doesn’t have a Goodreads entry. If any of my readers here is a Goodreads Librarian, please add it – I posted two requests on Goodreads for book additions.

From what I see, the gamebook writers in some countries that aren’t Bulgaria, seem to prefer publishing their works on Google Drive as a PDF and just let them be available to anyone for free. This one is published in English here.

The photo of the cover is from an angle on purpose – to see all the shiny letters. Then each page has decoration, and the illustrations are stunning. I’m not sure why and how that happened but this is a first edition and a translation at the same time.

The story is Gibson-style cyberpunk, with some references to Gibson and other gamebooks. The gameplay felt linear – you must go through most episodes for a successful read. I’d consider it easy. The writing is good, and the story is engaging.

4/5 for the book, 5+/5 for the editing/illustration/publishing. It’s a piece of art.

How I rate books on Goodreads

~ Veselin ~ Leave a comment

I love reading books. Writing reviews on Goodreads makes me feel accomplished and helps me remember what I’ve read. Before Goodreads, I often forgot which books I owned and ended up buying them or even reading them again.

Most of my ratings are 4s and 5s. Some are 3s. Almost no ratings are 2s and 1s. One would expect a more normal distribution of ratings but I have a filtering system, and then a rating system, and they work well.

Filtering

  • I would not buy or start a book if it’s under 3.7 unless I knew the writer, 4+ would be preferred
  • I would not complete a book if it’s bad
  • I would not write a review if I didn’t complete it

This leaves most of the 1s and 2s books out.

Rating

  • For a book to be 5, it has to be a truly enjoyable piece. It can be educational, profound, fun, page-turner, interesting – one or two of these would be enough for a 5 by me. I tend to give 5s to most books thanks to the previous 3 rules. My Goodreads profile is full of 5s.
  • 4s are good books with serious flaws, often parts of a series or by writers who like to read. Here’s one that’s far too long for the events and could use editing but is otherwise okay, and is by a great writer:
  • For a book to get a 1 or a 2, it has to trick me that it’s better and punch me with a terrible ending that makes no sense. Here’s a flagged one for propaganda:

If you have a ranking system, I would appreciate a link to the blog post where it’s described or a comment here. Thanks!