this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2024

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Selfhosted alternatives to Goodreads? (lemmy.zip)

submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

24 comments fedilink hide all child comments

So I finally broke down and made a very poor purchasing decision and ordered an e-ink writer to be a notepad/e-reader hybrid. Partially so that it is less of a hassle to read books I got from kickstarters and the like while still using the kindle app for the disturbing amounts of money I throw at Amazon.

Historically? I loved goodreads because theoretically I would get good recommendations based on what I liked. In practice, that has never happened but it is still nice to see if I read something in the past. And once I have multiple ebook ecosystems, it will be nice to actually check that rather than spend the first 100 pages wondering if this is familiar.

So any good recommendations? I suspect what I SHOULD do (and will likely start doing more as a self betterment thing) is just put a note in my personal nextcloud every time I finish a book with a quick summary and some thoughts. But having the big database is also really nice.

Thanks

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[–] [email protected] 55 points 6 months ago (5 children)

Bookwyrm

[–] [email protected] 15 points 6 months ago

+1 for bookwyrm

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

I'm using Bookwyrm for about a year now, I think.

I really like it and it's federated approach. Even though it has it's issues (multiple different versions of the same book over multiple servers), I still like to track my readings with it and I also love to add a new book to the server to make it available for everyone :-)

So a +1 from me as well :-)

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago

Saw the headline, came in thinking "I know there's a federated version, but can't remember the name" and BAM! there it is; Abidan in with the save!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

So. Fucking. Slow.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Only if it was Free Software or at least OpenSource…

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Huh? It is.

https://github.com/bookwyrm-social

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

No. It's not. It's just a proprietary source-available software. The license is neither Free nor Open.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person or organization (the "User") obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to use, copy, modify, merge, distribute, and/or sell copies of the Software, subject to the following conditions:

The conditions they attach are essentially, don't use it for corporate profit or law enforcement.

It's not a BSD license, but if you're an individual you can do whatever you want with it.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

So it does violate some core rules of both FS an OS. Also the text is so full of legal holes which makes it useless in it's goal too. It only prevents good-intent individuals from contributing and acts as a tool in hand of big evil corpurates.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I'm not sure what exactly you consider "core rules" but GPL3 also puts stipulations on how software can be used and who can use it but I doubt you would be complaining about that.

I'm also not a lawyer, but I don't see how a license that says "if you're an individual, do whatever you want" is going to stop someone with good intentions from contributing.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

Software Freedom #0: The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose

Open source criteria #6: The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.

By forbidding some entities from using the software, it violates both Free Software and Open Source and makes itself proprietary.

[+] [email protected] 24 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (3 children)

[deleted]

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

Same. I don't really see the point of tracking what you read if you're not interested in connecting it to other peoples' readings. Storygraph has been great.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

I do. I track my reading on Storygraph because it motivates me and helps me keep up the habit when I hit a slump or end up with some uninspiring piece. I don't have to fumble for a new book to read because all recommendations and interests are neatly registered and organized. My progress is tracked and I can celebrate my success. I also have a huge library of digital books, over 2 thousand. By tracking I can keep a log of what I have and haven't read. Sometimes, after a long while, you forget the names of specific books in series, or where you were last off in a particular author's collection, etc. It helps with it all. But I don't connect or share that with anyone. Nor do I feel the need to push it on anyone. Friends and acquaintances are not that into reading as I am and they see no use for a social network about books, and I don't want nosy strangers rummaging though my reading history.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Fair enough. I guess I'm not saying "there's no point in --" because I know people do these things. (Man, I wish I had the attention span to read as much as you.) I'm just saying I'm not going to host something just to keep track with no recommendations or interaction because that doesn't click for me personally.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

If I want something new I use gnooks. Their recommendations are usually spot on with my tastes. The secret to reading is immediate access. I got an ereader and that multiplied my interest in reading. Without it I wouldn't read as much as I do.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

Probably just so you don't accidentally waste time unknowingly rereading a book.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

I tried a few alternatives, but the Goodreads import wasn't working well for any of them and I miss the two people who have very similar taste to my own. Sadly I don't know them, we just connected over Reddit at some point and it feels weird asking them to migrate.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

To be honest I've found a really incredible community of like-minded people on BW and regularly find top quality book suggestions just from seeing what these people are reading. One key is to find your favorite books, and then follow lots of the same people who felt similar to you. Some will be misses and have bad recommendations going forward, but at least a handful will be very like-minded readers.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I've been using hardcover for a few months...great vibe, active development.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

But it can't be self-hosted, right?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Correct, not self-hosted. The advantage is it comes with a book reading community :-)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

According to the roadmap, the project will get open-sourced before the end of 2024, so there is some hope.
https://roadmap.hardcover.app/feature-requests/posts/allow-open-source

I hope they implement ActivityPub, so it can federate with BookWyrm

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

I wanted to migrate my CSV export from Goodreads somewhere selfhosted but apparently it's not possible. All the selfhosted book trackers I've tried insist on "properly" importing your books and to do that they only consider entries with proper ISBN numbers. Guess what, many of the books I've read don't have those on Goodreads. So they'll simply ignore like 3/4ths of my export. So stupid.

Anyway, I ended up knocking together a shell script to convert the CSV to a plain text file and I'll be updating that from now on. I never really cared about "shelves" and all that other stuff anyway, I mainly need title, author, and when I started/ended reading something. I don't need ratings and reviews to know what I think about a book and if my memory fails I can just read it again.

Back when people I knew were on Goodreads it was fun checking out what the others were reading but they've all left the platform ages ago.