I had been using Goodreads regularly for a couple of years. I even participated in the Annual Challenge of setting a target of a number of books to read by the end of the year. I also tried to keep up with religiously writing reviews for books that I read. More so, for solidifying my own understanding of my own tastes more than anything else.
It was a good undertaking but I’d always end up lazing around before writing a review and the end result was always a half-assed attempt. Plus, after writing about half the reviews that I wrote, it was glaringly obvious that I was mostly reading crime fiction or a subtle variant of it.
Anyway, in 2023 I read about 90 books and in 2022 it was around 50. In 2022, I started off without any intention of reaching a target. But as I inched closer to 50, I wanted to hit the glory century mark. There’s no prize for winning this contest but it was a challenge to myself (of course the people who I follow on Goodreads who read hundreds of books a year added to it!)
The good part about it was that the target number only played in my head until I picked up a book or between reads but never when I was reading any of them. Reading also helped alleviate some of the stress from other facets of my life. In essence, I was using it as a coping mechanism. It was good while it lasted. I knew I’d eventually get bored of it. And bored did I get by the end of it.
Eventually, at the end of the year I took a break and changed platforms. I’m writing this to justify to myself that switching platforms was a good decision. Perhaps as an excuse to get back into writing reviews, but on my personal website (just for vanity!) and for ‘T+10 years me’ to have a laugh or reminisce about the good ol’ days.
By far, the biggest reason I wanted to switch to an alternative was Dark Mode . I think that alone should be enough to conclude this article? If I used Goodreads exclusively on my computer it wouldn’t be much of a problem and Chrome extensions could solve this. Unfortunately, I’m beholden to the tinier version of the rectangular piece of metal.
On the phone, at least on iOS, the app is horrible. The app probably hasn’t had a decent overhaul in at least a decade (judging just by the looks of it?). A couple of other problems on the mobile which I can recall (it’s been a few months since I used Goodreads but I can reasonably assume that nothing would’ve improved because it probably doesn’t make Amazon a profit):
No saved drafts: Often times after typing out a large paragraph for a review, I’d just copy it onto my phone’s clipboard, because the app was not reliable when I hit submit. Many times, it would fail to submit, close the submit modal and my review would disppear. I’d have to type it all over again.
No formatting options for the review editor: If you want to add bold or italics, you have to hand write the HTML tags. There’s no formatting toolbar. Yeah in 2024 there’s no formatting toolbar, for a review site!
Yester year UI: The UI saw no reasonable improvements over the years and well, I like seeing a new or refreshed skin on the apps I use once in a while. All the buttons felt a bit too ancient sort of like an enterprise application. It doesn’t exactly align with business goals but it isn’t my company and I can have expectations as an end user :)
Bugs: For some reason, I could never really accept friend requests within the app. It’d always fail and I’d end up on Safari trying to Click Accept.
Unsatisfactory Recommendations: I never did read any of the recommendations. I did not find many of them enticing. I usually used the user curated lists’ feature and what other people I follow read to find my next read.
I had been reading about StoryGraph as a viable alternative for a while on Reddit and finally decided to try it out. They have a way to export all your reviews and reads on Goodreads in case you’re worried about switching platforms and losing all of your data. So far, there’s only one thing I don’t like about it. In Goodreads, the whole feed of reading other people’s reviews and finding books to read was a whole lot better. Storygraph does have a similar feature but it doesn’t feel as good. I will give Goodreads that. But that isn’t enough motivation to stop using it. Of note, I like the following of Storygraph and continue to use it:
Recommendations: The recommendations are really good. It asks you to fill in a couple of basic information and generates a bunch of recommendations (which you can continually refresh). Sort of like the Spotify Recommendation Refresh button in a playlist.
Dark Mode: Nothing else to say here
Fancy analytics: I don’t particularly use this but reading stats are nice to look at once in a while.
A proper review editor: Finally, a review editor where I don’t have to add html formatting tags myself!
For my use case, where I need a review site where I can start a Reading challege, record the books I read and reviews associated with them with a Dark Mode screen, StoryGraph does the job for me. I don’t use many of the community features of GoodReads. But if you’re into that, then maybe you might find it a tad hard. While StoryGraph does have all those community features built in (and some in progress), it doesn’t have the same population of users to make it worthwhile, but it’s growing and will get there.