Since 2012, I’ve used Goodreads to track what I’ve read, what I’m reading and what I want to read.

I’ve tracked over 280 books read and more than 300 in the ever-growing pile of stuff I want to read.

In 2013, Goodreads was sold to Amazon, and whilst the site soared to 150m+ users, it’s stagnated. There are no new features of note, and it’s basically just feeding the algorithm of stuff for Amazon to recommend to me. It’s not useful anyway as I prefer physical books, usually borrowed from the local library or purchased. And then there are many little annoyances. If a book is missing, you can request its addition, but I’ve had it take months! Sometimes, the information on a book is wrong, like page count, cover, and category – but it’s so hard to change.

Recently, on Mastodon, I read about a new service called The StoryGraph. Just like Goodreads, but it doesn’t suck. 😝

First, it can import your Goodreads lists. It’s easy to add books yourself. You can update book covers and so on. There’s basic AI description and recommendations and lots more reporting than Goodreads.

The StoryGraph is the work of a single developer, Nadia Odunayo, and there is a paid tier to help pay the bills.

If, like me, you find Goodreads annoying you more and more – check it out!