Pretty straightforward: books and literature of all stripes can be discussed here.
If you're interested in posting your own writing, formal or informal, check out the Writing community!
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
@[email protected] I used to use #Anobii as well, it was far better than #Goodreads in its early days, unfortunately, the latter overtook them. Now, most of my shelves are on Goodreads.
You can go self-hosting mode. You can self-host #BookWyrm, or the traditional, ever reliable, #Calibre. ^_^ I no longer use Calibre because Goodreads.
On the BookWyrm side of things, it can import your books from Goodreads.
@youronlyone
@Deebster The only thing I really really miss with #BookWyrm is an API, I want to be able to automatically synchronize my shelves and individual book status/progress with both #Calibre and #KOReader.
There is an open issue on the subject, so π€
@[email protected] True that. Hopefully it will come. I want to remove my reliance on Goodreads since I'm not using it other than to track. And the authors I follow are more active outside of Goodreads. π (Some are even here on the fediverse network.)
#Calibre
As in the ebook manager? I don't see any way to track your reading or other lists on there. Is it a plugin, or are we talking about different Calibres?
You can do it pretty easily in Calibre with custom columns for reading status, rating, etc. For Kobo users, the KoboTouchExtended plugin syncs reading status automatically (I'm sure there's some equivalent for other ereader brands).
ah, I didn't realise that custom columns was a thing you could do! Makes sense then. I might see if there's a way automate adding all my last read dates into a column.
I guess you can only track books you have as an ebook, so no dead-tree versions or to-read lists.
If you really wanted to track books you don't have digitally, I guess you could use a dummy file (even a blank txt could work) and use Calibre itself to add all the metadata. It's far from ideal, though.
I just started using Bookwyrm. Not the best app ever but it's federated and relatively new, so I'm giving it time. My wife uses Goodreads with her friends but I don't want to support Amazon any more than I already do.
Absolutely nothing. I probably should though. Or at least something to find some new interesting books.
Well, you don't have to. I like to be able to answer when I've read a book - or, increasingly, whether I've read a book. Apparently there are books I enjoyed while reading but made zero impression on my long-term memory.
My memory is terrible (thanks, Covid), but I will definitely be able to tell someone if I've read a book or not. No list required. Don't ask me what it was about, though.
Memory loss has its advantages, I can read the same book a bunch of times and it's like I've never read it before.
I use a cardboard bookmark, shaped like a robot, with a frayed bit of yarn tied to it, which I bought from Waldenbooks in the early 80's. [drops mic, walks away]
I must confess to being somewhat disappointed by BookWyrm; however I think it's still very early days over there. I wish them all the luck in the world, and hope they can dethrone Goodreads which is owned by amazon and is therefore evil. I'll be checking on them periodically to see how they progress.
Nothing. Why should I track my reading? I read for fun, tracking it would take the fun right out of it and turn it into some kind of competition. I'm not at school anymore.
Personally for me it's because I have terrible recall memory and having a list reminds me what I read and who I read more easily than trying to knock it loose from the Ol noggin. I do it for TV and movies as well.
Things like good reads and story graph also host user reviews and can be good for discovering new things.
I use the strictly offline Book Tracker app on my iPhone. I donβt really care about reviews or the social features, I just want an overview and some stats about my reading.
I use Goodreads, I have used it since like 2010 or something so I have all my books there. Hopefully, we get some good alternatives though as Goodreads has become really slow, it feels like using the Internet in the 90's.
Same here. I have so many books in there and all my bookshelves set up in the particular nitpicky way that I like them that moving all that over to another service is a daunting idea.
I started using Obsidian with Dataview plugin.
I've started doing something similar! Obsidian with the Dataview and the Book Search plugins.
I'm also on bookwyrm, specifically bookrastinating
I was using Storygraph for a little while once I decided I no longer wanted to use Goodreads due to being owned by Amazon.
Then I tried Openreads for a short time, before realising I missed some of the social elements of the first two.
Finally settled on a local BookWyrm instance, Rambling Readers, which I'm happy with. It sometimes requires a bit of manual editing of books, but the more people use BookWyrm and contribute, the less often that should be necessary.
At this point, honestly just a spreadsheet that gets synced from laptop to phone with syncthing. Boring but effective.π
This is me. Mostly I just want to know what I've read and what I thought of it, or if I did not finish. I don't need all the other things.
A spreadsheet in Libre calc and Joplin for some notes.
I've used LibraryThing.com for years. Initially it was to maintain my personal library, but it has lots of ways to get recommendations that I love. It doesn't feel as much like social media, more a place to keep a catalogue, but there are social aspects. (Forums, friends, & comparing libraries.)
I use Librarything - I tried Bookwyrm but it could not handle the size of my import and there doesn't seem to be any mass-edit options that would let me fix it. Similar situation with Storygraph.
How many books are we talking about here?
~2k books. I might have tried dividing my import files into multiple smaller files to see if that took, it was a while back.
Hmm, that's a lot but not that many; my read + to-read comes to about 1k and I'm far from being the kind of person who flies through several YA books every week.
Thank you for saying it's not that many haha, it makes me feel like my people are here. But yeah, I frequently see social media catalogs with extensive TBRs hit >10k.
Goodreads. I don't care it's slow because it's not like I'm acessing it more than once a week anyway.
Thanks for making this thread! I've been using Goodreads and Storygraph, but have been trying to find another tool as well. I have considered using notion but I'd miss the social aspect. The other recommendations for bookwyrm and librarything make me want to check those out. Appreciate the suggestions!
I mostly read ebooks, using an Android-based e-ink tablet (Onyx Boox Leaf 2) and the KOReader app, and I use Calibre to manage my books and track my reading.
I use Goodreads mainly but have just made a Bookwyrm account to see what it's like. It's definitely rough around the edges, will stick with it for a bit and see how it develops
StoryGraph! The very little social interaction gives you less FOMO and it's not owned by Jeff Hellbos
I do use Storygraph. It allows you to add any missing book and the developer is always updating and listening to the community.