The Cathedrals I've Read the Back of the Book
There's nothing like finding the perfect read: a page-turner that keeps you hooked and up all dark because you lot tin can't put it down; a novel that takes you lot to a afar, fascinating world and lets you escape from reality for a petty while; or a book that teaches you about something you've been longing to learn virtually — like pizza making, dog training or career development.
Only finding the perfect book is no piece of cake task. I have the feeling that sometimes I spend more fourth dimension figuring out what my next great read will exist than actually reading. Considering once I find that rare novel that checks all of the boxes, I devour it.
I've adult sure tricks when information technology comes to discovering that groovy adjacent book: asking my friends with similar reading tastes for recommendations; checking the new releases from some of my favorite authors; reading volume recommendation lists from those authors; and visiting NPR's annual, curated option Book Concierge. But these concluding few years I've too turned to Goodreads.
Goodreads is a social network and volume database that launched in January 2007. Amazon, which started its giant retailer business as an online bookseller, bought Goodreads in 2013.
"Our mission is to assist people find and share books they love," Goodreads' website says. Goodreads' social network attribute lets you create an account, track what yous're reading and continue a log of it. You can too add together friends and see what they're reading. One of my favorite features is the "Reading Challenge." Every January you lot can set a number of books you want to read and then piece of work your fashion toward that goal amount throughout the year. Setting a realistic yet somewhat challenging goal can be the perfect style to persuade yourself to read only a lilliputian scrap more, even if information technology'southward but one or two more books than the previous year. And this is one of those competitions where you're only measuring yourself against yourself.
You can as well just use Goodreads every bit a catalog to look up a volume's author, publication date or number of pages.
Goodreads' Reviews, Ratings & Lists
In addition to tracking your progress and seeing what your friends on Goodreads are reading and favoriting, y'all tin can employ this social network to see what its millions of users (statistics website Statista estimated Goodreads had 90 one thousand thousand registered members in July 2019) are perusing and how much they're liking their reads. Need some more help navigating the site? Here are some of Goodreads features that tin assist you choose your adjacent book:
Reviews: Book reviews are one of Goodreads' most appealing offerings. And while those reviews are written by users, not professional book critics at major publications, some of those who write book reviews exercise it regularly. They may even exist bloggers who read about specific topics or genres. Think most it similar the type of restaurant review you can get on Yelp.
Per Goodreads review guidelines, commercial reviews are not allowed. If a reviewer receives a free copy of a volume, they must disclose information technology in the review. Some reviewers receive avant-garde readers' copies (ARCs), which makes it possible for a review to striking Goodreads earlier a volume's publication date.
Ratings: Lazy readers, like myself, adopt to requite a volume merely a 1-5 star rating instead of writing an bodily review to become with it. Near books have a bigger number of star ratings than bodily reviews. I trust Goodreads' users enough that I might avert a book with a rating lower than 3.5 stars. Also, the bigger the number of ratings, the more reliable the metric tends to be.
I use ratings and reviews in conjunction to aid me decide whether I should beginning reading something or not. One of the most recent reviews for the first book in the Bridgertons series, for instance, already warns the reader virtually the volume's most controversial passage. And so, even if that book has a 3.89 rating, a review can help you make a final conclusion. And yes, reviews might end up being a bit spoilery. So be conscientious when you do your research.
Lists: They can be created past users or the Goodreads' squad and they are a good mode to discover reads in specific genres. If you similar a book, y'all can meet what lists that title is included on and notice something similar. There are lists for everything, from Scandinavian/Nordic Mysteries to Science Fiction Books by Female person Authors or Food Books for Readers to Devour.
This is probably my favorite part of Goodreads. Each year users can choose their favorite books in dissimilar categories — Fiction, Mystery & Thriller, Fantasy, Romance, Scientific discipline & Engineering, Historical Fiction, Horror, Sense of humor, and so on. Non only is this a good way of giving some honey to the authors you've enjoyed reading, but the winners and runner-ups also tend to be solid books to add to your list. (They might fifty-fifty help you with your holiday shopping.)
And while Goodreads has received its off-white share of criticism for being a bit outdated — I don't remember the last time the website or app were refreshed — I nevertheless can't see myself not using it. It's buggy sometimes and it lacks some usability features, but information technology certain has allowed me to detect authors and books I would have totally missed otherwise.
Source: https://www.ask.com/culture/goodreads-book-reviews?utm_content=params%3Ao%3D740004%26ad%3DdirN%26qo%3DserpIndex
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