I signed up for Goodreads, what do I do now?

night-flyer

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Hey Alessandra I'm on Goodreads. Actually got into it by accident by entering some book give-away thingy. :D Have no idea of what to do there, seldom go there actually. But I'll friend you and we can be lost together. :D
 

KellyAssauer

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Goodreads looks through your e-mail account--

Hold on a second here... does it 'look through' whatever email account I give it (say my gmail?) or does it snoop my entire computer? Because one is permissible and the other is a malignant virus...
 

Deleted member 42

I joined once, but I felt bad listing any books I didn't want to give lots of stars to. And then that seemed terribly sookish, so I deleted myself.

I think I may have missed the point ... I'm on librarything though. I'm quite harsh there. I think it's something to do with being able to give half-stars

I'm on both sites--I use LibraryThing to track my library, or parts of it (my books are mostly in storage, and un Thinged) and GoodReads to track the books I've read.

To be honest, I initially joined both sites and some similar sites out of curiosity and because I was asked to write about them.

I don't even star most books.
 

theichibun

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I mostly use it so I can be in a bookstore looking around and save a book to be read later. Most of the stuff I've read isn't rated. And that's fine. I just want a record.

But I really need to get on the rating thing so I can use it to get some book recommendations.
 

Alessandra Kelley

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Well, I've been using it to catalogue the books I have, and have read. So far I haven't used the to-be-read feature, since: A, I find it kind of oppressive just as a personal thing, and B, I've seen some people complain that it gives an inflated impression of what people have actually read (the number of books a member has is displayed, but lists of books to-be-read are included in the total).

I guess the point is that GoodReads can be used for a number of purposes: finding new books, meeting others who read similar things or dissimilar things, cataloguing collections, venting.

There are communities there, I'm pretty sure, but they seem disjointed and hard-to-find.
 

BigWords

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I guess the point is that GoodReads can be used for a number of purposes: finding new books, meeting others who read similar things or dissimilar things, cataloguing collections, venting.

The beauty of Goodreads is the discovery of titles which I would never have thought of picking up (and in some cases loving insanely), but the venting thing is - in my opinion - frustrating. If people really hate a book for some reason, they tend to go overboard on their anger.

The lists are my favorite - massive, indexed lists, with all the information I could possibly need to sate my curiosity. Some are plain wrong (thrillers listed as horror, and the knowledge on cheap fifties pulpy paperback titles is staggeringly poor, on the whole), but it has come in handy in a pinch. I really do need to update though...
 

DragonHeart

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I use it mostly to keep track of what I've read and I love participating in the yearly reading challenge. When I'm looking for recommendations a lot of times I'll look for authors I enjoy and if they are on GR as well, I will shamelessly compare books to see how similar our tastes are and abuse their book lists to find new material. :D

My GoodReads is linked in my sig, feel free to friend me. :)
 

JohnnyGottaKeyboard

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I've been a member of Goodreads for a few years but have done sod all until my book was released.
Now I haunt it obsessively. As I'm a newbie author I don't have reviewers tripping over themselves to review my book and I'm not one of those who can tweet endless requests for reviews so I look at reader feedback in my pathetic search for some validation. :D
Having said that, there's so much on there it's impossible to get a grip of the place. So my recommendation is to take what you want from it and enjoy the resources.
Ah, this describes me perfectly and saved so much typing.

I will note that I no longer star books from people I know as this led to a particularly ugly falling out. Not on my part!

Mainly when I see a book anywhere, including often an AW signature, I click on Goodreads first to check it out. I (personally) give more weight to a GR review than, say, one on Amazon.