At the end of last year, I found out that Kindle on PC was accessible. Now me being an avid reader, I dove into reading a lot more than I used to. I gotta say, I’m so happy that I did, because there’s a part of me that really missed reading and I’m just so excited to be able to read as much as I used to as a kid.
I watch a fair amount of Booktubers, and always hear them talking about using Goodreads. I figured since I got back into reading, I’d go join and give it a shot. I didn’t realize how much fun I’d have with it, and it’s honestly helped me stay on track with reading, find books I wouldn’t normally find, and just really enjoy getting engaged in reading in a way that wasn’t possible before. I’m usually not one for apps if I’m being honest, but there’s just something about the features that I like to use on Goodreads that makes me really enjoy Goodreads as a whole, and I wanted to share that with you. Keep in mind, I don’t use nearly close to all of the features on Goodreads. I think that’s a good thing about the site though: You can choose what you like to use, and not feel like you have to use every aspect of the site to enjoy what you do enjoy using on Goodreads, if that makes sense. I notice a lot of apps try and upsell you to use EVERYTHING on its platform and that always has annoyed me, so it’s just nice to use what I want to use, leave the site, and call it a day until I’m ready to hop back on and do it all over again.
The main features I use on Goodreads are the progress updates on what you’re currently reading, hunting down book recommendations, using the shelves, and writing reviews and rating books. My favorite feature out of all of these is the update progress feature. All you have to do is mark you’re currently reading a book, and you get to update your progress in page numbers or percentages. You have the option to leave little notes about how you feel about the book you’re reading too, and this is my favorite part of this feature. When you’re done, you can go back and read what you thought and it’s just a lot of fun to me to see if my thoughts about the book have changed, if by books end I liked it a little or a lot, and it helps me with reviews, as I can see my general thoughts of the book overall and use that for my rating and reviewing of the book. I also like that when you mark the book finished it counts towards your reading count for the year instantly, and towards the reading challenge you set for yourself for the year. It’s just a really convenient way to track your reading, and it’s my favorite part of the site.
I really like how after you’ve rated a certain amount of books, Goodreads recommends very on the nose books to you after a certain point. Sometimes it isn’t what I’d personally want to read, but I get why it recommended the book to me in the first place because it would be something someone who liked the genre I read the most would like. Reviewing and rating is fun and easy too, and it helps me stay engaged in reading consistently. Seeing my progress just makes me feel accomplished as weird as that sounds, and just reading without Goodreads to track this sort of stuff in the past has made me fall off the wagon. The reading challenge really helps with that too, and I’ve set it up so I can hopefully read 30 books by the end of the year, like I wanted to do a few years ago.
All in all, Goodreads has been a really enjoyable experience for me. It’s helped me find books to read, given me enjoyment in tracking my reading progress, and it motivates me to read a bit more than I would be without it. It’s highly accessible for the parts of it I use, and there’s so much of it that I haven’t touched on here simply because I don’t use those aspects of the site. Will I use things like lists, communities, and friends more in the future? Maybe, but as of now I honestly really enjoy Goodreads just being for me, and I think that’s something that gets lost on people sometimes. I use Goodreads more as an enjoyable efficiency tool, and have enjoyed every moment of doing so. I’m not ready to make that change, so as of now it’s just going to stay as a book tracker and recommender for me. So
happy I decided to use the site though, really like it!
What aspects of Goodreads do you like to use? Let me know in the comments below!
The Blind Nerd 