Well now I'm wondering why I should track my reading. I just read, have my whole life. Some benefit I'm missing?
this post was submitted on 06 Mar 2024
17 points (94.7% liked)
Books
4469 readers
28 users here now
A community for all things related to Books.
Rules
- Be Nice
Official Bingo Posts:
Related Communities
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
For my uses, I’ve found it beneficial to remember things I read looong ago, especially series that were partially written when I read them and now new books have come out. It’s also helped me watch the stats of what I read and how many times I’ve read something.
Often I’ll remember a snippet of a book, good or bad and wish that I had been tracking what I’ve been reading longer.
You don't have to. If you don't care about tracking this stuff, that's great, one less thing to worry about.
I track my reading with a bookmark
Calibre automatically updates Goodreads so that ends up being my backup.
I’m torn between The StoryGraph and Hardcover. Hardcover is the better app/site in my opinion, but it’s still quite young so the book database is rougher with a lot of duplicates or missing metadata. But it also has a public API so hopefully someone will write a Calibre Plugin and I can stop with Goodreads all together.
That said, I pay for both, and Hardcover even with missing data beats StoryGraph by 10%, imho.
I’m JaymesRS on all the places, and I’m always looking to follow others.
Honestly none of the options were covering my needs so I rolled a custom google sheet. It's ugly, but it's hooked up to a books API so I can grab cover images and any info I deem relevant. Not as elegant as the apps, but it gives me flexibility, and since it's just a spreadsheet, importing from Goodreads and storygraph was easy.
That is so valid and I’ve been considering doing something similar. What books API do you use? I tried various ones for a project a little while ago and was a bit disappointed in the data quality.
I just used the Google books API. The data quality is not great for some titles, but it's a small annoyance for the flexibility gained.
I use storygraph as well but haven't tried any of the social parts of the app. I mostly just like being able to keep track and see how many and what kind of books I'm reading. Bookwyrm is often recommended on mastodon.
I recently switched from Goodreads to Storygraph, and have ended up tracking my reading a lot more reliably since the change.
I have been using LibraryThing for more than a decade, I think. I don't care too much about social features, and it's great for cataloging.
I just use goodreads and my “finished” collection on my eReaders.