3 Reasons Why I Use Goodreads

Would you like to read more books? This blog post discusses the 3 reasons why I use Goodreads: Tracking, checking, and remembering, and how these functions help to make my reading life easier, more fun, and more successful.

Let's start with the basics.

What is Goodreads?

Goodreads is a website: www.goodreads.com and an app for book lovers.

Goodreads is also social media. You can add people to your friends group, see what each other is reading, and interact on Goodreads. There are chat boards and groups and all sorts of social things that you could get into if you are that way inclined. Personally, I am a lurker and not much of a socialiser, but it is cool to see what people I know are reading.

You can choose to create a profile and log in, or you can use it as a guest to look up books without needing to create a profile, but then you would miss out on some functionality. Read on for more info and to find out how I use Goodreads to help me read more books.

What can you do on Goodreads?

• Search for books and find book info

• Read book reviews

• Rate books and leave your own reviews

• Interact with people

• Read lists of books

• Make lists of books

• Get books recommendations based on your reads and ratings

What are the 3 reasons why I use Goodreads?

I'm so glad that you asked! Let me tell you...

1. Tracking

Every year I set a new reading goal. This year, I set myself the goal of reading 50 books in 2025. Goodreads lets me set this goal, track the progress that I make towards my end goal, and track all of the books that I read.

Right now, when I open Goodreads I can see that I have completed 12/50 books this year, which is 24% of my reading goal and puts me 2 books ahead of schedule. If you're goal-driven like me, then this will help you read more books.

When I start reading a book, I find the Good on Goodreads and set the book status as 'Currently Reading', then when I finish the book, I change the status to 'I have finished'. The book then gets automatically added to my list of completed books for the year, and all of my stats will update.

I must confess that I do get a bit of a kick out of being able to change the book status to 'Completed' and reaching my reading goals, so I find this tracking functionality pretty motivational.

2. Checking

Ever bought a dud book?

If I'm thinking about buying a book, often I will check out the reviews on Goodreads to see if it is any good before I shell out our hard-earned cash. Sometimes, when I'm in an op shop or book shop/fair/etc, I find a book that I think I've heard of before, so I look it up to make sure it's the one I'm thinking of.

It's really handy to have the Goodreads app on my phone. This means that I don't have to wait to check out a book, I can look the book up and check out the reviews while I am standing in a store with the book in my hand. This is especially helpful for non-fiction, so that I can check if the book actually contains what I need.

3. Remembering

If you like to talk books like me, then the Goodreads tracking function is brilliant when you tell someone about a book you have read and can't remember the title or author. I can just look up my 'Read' books on Goodreads and find out the info I need.

If I read about a book that sounds good, or someone tells me about one that I should check out, then I can immediately add it to my 'Want to Read' list on the Goodreads app on my phone so I don't forget about it. Lots of people tell me about lots of books and I would most definitely forget about many of them if I didn't add them to my 'Want to Read' list.

FYI:

• There are other apps out there that do the same sort of thing as Goodreads. Some of them do a lot more, like StoryGraph, which can create all sorts of charts about your reading if you'd like to see pretty pie charts showing what percentage of books you read is in each genre and other stats like that. I have never tried any other reading tracker app, so I cannot compare them.

• Goodreads is affiliated with Amazon. You can link your Kindle with Goodreads and it will automatically track your reading progress and update your books to 'Complete' without needing to go in and do it manually.

• This post is not sponsored. I have received no payment. I just like using Goodreads. I'd probably like StoryGraph or whatever other options there are too, but I am a creature of habit and I find Goodreads easy to use and it does the things that I need it to do, so I haven't bothered trying anything else.

Do you use Goodreads?

Feel welcome to add me as a friend and check out what I've been reading and what I think - I leave star ratings on each book I read, but leave the reviews for my newsletter.

If you like reading subjective little book reviews, then subscribe to my monthly newsletter, Books, Colour and Chaos.

Happy reading!

Much love,

Marley