Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl
Hi everybody, and welcome to a new Top Ten Tuesday! Today’s topic is all about online resources for book lovers, and honestly I’m one of those people who is pretty content with just Goodreads. For those that don’t know, Goodreads is pretty much an online tracker for books, and a place to share reviews and keep track of TBRs. However, Goodreads is also pretty static and not really super modern or good at updating their interface or features.
I know there are some other options out there, but I’m personally still pretty stuck to Goodreads, so I just made this wishlist of 7 features I wish Goodreads would implement (or improve upon). Here we go:
Half stars
This is an obvious one and I think the one most people have been wishing for the longest. As someone who uses half stars all the time, it’s super annoying to always have to rate differently in Goodreads, because do you rate a 4,5 star books 4 or 5 stars? This change can’t be that difficult to implement, right?
More personal, customisable yearly challenges
Sure, there is the trusty Goodreads Reading Challenge, but that only keeps track of a total number of books you want to read per year. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could create some more fun, personal challenges and keep track of them in Goodreads? Like for example: Read 10 graphic novels this year / Read 5 800+ page books this year / Read 5 non-fiction books this year / …
Memories
How fun would it be if Goodreads would keep track of memories and you could share them, sort of like on Instagram? Like “On this day, 10 years ago, you were reading Twilight”. It’d be perfect for nostalgia reasons and could remind you of nice books you maybe want to re-read now.
Statistics and Charts
Look, I love looking at pretty charts and having my reading life broken down in nice little stats and I’m sure I’m not the only one. The data is all there in Goodreads, so give us some pretty charts please!
Better Search Tool
Seriously, how difficult is this search tool? If you spell one letter wrong in the entire title, it just doesn’t find your book but will give you 10 suggestions that are even less relevant to the title you entered. This is just soooo annoying.
Better Recommendations
Look, it’s the streaming era. A personalised recommendation page in the style of Netflix would be amazing and I never needed anything more. More books if you love enemies-to-lovers. Because you love Annette Marie, try these. Books set in libraries. Because you love dragons. And so on, and so on.
Bulk editing your shelves
Not sure if this already exists and I’m just totally missing it, but I have no way to bulk edit my shelves. I’ve been wanting to clean up my TBR shelf, but I need to remove every book one at a time. And then my list moves back up so I have to scroll all the way down again just to remove another book. So annoying!
Tell Me:
Do you use Goodreads?
Which features would you like to see there?
I like your suggestions. Goodreads is a really neat site but could be so much better. I should spend more time there. I always seem to neglect it.
I also don’t use Goodreads to its full potential, but I might if it would be a bit modernized 🙂
I think these suggestions are brilliant!
Thanks, Sophie!
Sometimes you just need that half star!
Exactly, those half stars are crucial!
Yes, so glad your first point is half stars – that is probably my biggest complaint about Goodreads!
It would be so great to have half stars!
I couldn’t agree with your suggestions more!
My post: https://lydiaschoch.com/top-ten-tuesday-online-resources-for-book-lovers/
Thanks!
I love Good Reads but the app itself is really not great!
It’s indeed a bit outdated for some things.
Jeff’s Bezos can launch himself into space, but half-stars are just too complicated? smh.
Love your suggestions. Goodreads is so frustrating…there have been no changes or improvements FOR YEARS. Someone will come along with a real competitor someday. I hope.
My list is here— https://fiftytwo.blog/2021/10/19/ttt-books-i-loved-but-will-probably-wont-re-read/
Happy TTT!
Lori
Haha, exactly!
I actually second all of these, especially the half stars, personalized challenges and book editing. I feel like the search function has room for improvement as well and adding a book too. Great list. Happy reading! My TTT https://readwithstefani.com/10-books-about-books-on-my-tbr/
The search function definitely has room for improvement! 🙂
I so use Goodreads and love all of these suggestions! Especially half stars and the personalized challenges. Great ideas.
Here is our Top Ten Tuesday. Thank you!
Thanks!
THERE IS A WAY TO BULK EDIT! At least to delete titles.
My Books >Select which Bookshelf you want to edit > at the top, click Batch Edit > Choose which books you want to delete by checking the box next to them > Click Remove Books From Shelf at the top of the page.
I don’t know if it can be done in the app, but it can be on a desktop.
I would love half stars, better search tools, and better recommendations. All of these are great ideas!
OMG you’re right! I tried it before and always got an error when I clicked “remove books from this shelf’, saying “”to-read” is an exclusive shelf. You cannot remove a book from its exclusive shelf, but you can move it to a different one, such as “read”. So I figured it didn’t work. But I tried to click “remove books from all shelves” now and it does work. Not ideal in all cases maybe, because sometimes a book could be kept on one shelf and just removed from another, but for now it works for me. Not sure why I didn’t try this before haha 🙂 Thanks for the tip!
So, if I’m reading this right, I think I can figure out the issue you’re having. When you click on My Books and go to this page, on the left hand side it lists:
All
Read
Currently Reading
Want to Read.
You have to click on Want to Read. It will bring up all the books you want to read. After this, if you click batch edit, there should be the option for “Remove books from THIS shelf” at the top instead of “ALL shelves”. That will just clear it off your want to read shelf, I believe.
Thanks so much for all the help! I just tried again, step by step as you said it, but I unfortunately still get an error when I then click “Remove books from THIS shelf”. I can only do ‘remove books from ALL shelves”. If the “THIS shelf” works for you, then I guess it’s somehow a bug in my Goodreads? Though removing from all shelves already helps me out quite a bit in most cases, so thanks for the tip 🙂
That is too bad! I guess at least it kind of works for you in another way.
Or maybe it was just an error and will work now?
Oh my goodness, the half star thing. Yes! I mean, how many years have users been begging for that? How hard can it be to implement that? And the search engine… ugh. Least intuitive search engine ever. One letter off and it acts like it has no idea what you’re looking for. LOL
Exactly! With just one update (half stars), they could make their users soooo happy! And that search engine, it’s so awful it’s kind of hilarious though 🙂
I completely agree about all of these. Storygraph has most of them, so why can’t Goodreads? I would’ve been using Storygraph for my book tracking all the time if the app weren’t so hard to navigate with a screen reader.
I should really check out Storygraph, though part of me keeps hoping Goodreads will just step up and update a bit 🙂
[…] https://www.lindseyh.be/2021/10/7-features-i-wish-goodreads-would-implement-or-improve-upon/ […]
I love all of your suggestions!
Pam @ Read! Bake! Create!
https://readbakecreate.com/5-booktube-creators-worthy-of-checking-out/
Thanks so much!
Great suggestions, especially the half star! Why is that so complicated? lol
Exactly, half stars can’t be that complicated, right?
This is a really great list and I’d love to see them all implemented. The memories one would be especially fun, to see what I was reading and how my reading tastes have changed over the years. And huge yes to being able to bulk edit. It’s so tedious now.
Bookish memories would be so fun! I’d love that feature 🙂
YES! I agree with all of these, especially the dang half stars. Why hasn’t that been done yet? I hope someone at Goodreads is listening…
Happy TTT!
Susan
http://www.blogginboutbooks.com
We definitely need those half stars!
Some great ideas there, Lindsey, I second all of them. Hope Goodreads gets to see this.
Thanks for visiting my TTT earlier.
Thanks so much!
YES! Please make it easier to delete or edit shelves. I changed how I organize my books a few years ago and really want to delete shelves.
Yes, it should be so much easier!
Omg YES to all of these ideas. I don’t understand why Goodreads doesn’t just do it because I’m pretty sure that for as long as I’ve been using Goodreads, pretty much everyone has been asking for so many of these changes!
So true! I wonder why they just don’t implement any changes – lack of workforce, lack of budget, or maybe they just don’t care? I have no idea.
YES!!! I use Goodreads all the time and I think ALL of these are GREAT suggestions!! I am sure there has to be a way to suggest them. Book Sirens does the pretty graphs 🙂 Here is my link for this week: https://cindysbookcorner.blogspot.com/2021/10/top-ten-tuesday-online-resources-for.html
Oh I’ll need to check Book Sirens, thanks for the tip 🙂
I would give up on Goodreads ever introducing half stars. (& they have said many times that they never will) I just add them myself at the top of my review. If anyone here was around when Goodreads introduced rereads *shudder* The bugs & problems went on for months. Page count challenges probably won’t work as page counts on books can be wrong or not there (I’m a Goodreads Librarian & used to fix up page counts)
I do different challenges in Groups.
No one would ever argue against the fact that search on Goodreads is absolutely terrible. I recommend searching by ISBN or ASIN when you know them. A lot less aggravasting.
Goodreads may never add the half stars, but they’ll always remain on my wishlist anyway 🙂