It is a commonplace that the act of reading is a worthy use of your time. However nonsensical that idea might be (nobody expects to be praised for the number of journal articles they read), it’s not surprising there is a proliferation of apps to encourage reading; and, at the same time, to encourage the buying of books.
Goodreads is the big player in the space. Founded 2006, Goodreads was bought by Amazon in 2013. It describes itself in Google snippets as
Meet your next favorite book … Find and read more books you’ll love, and keep track of the books you want to read. Be part of the world’s largest community of book lovers on Goodreads.
Wikipedia describes it more objectively as “social cataloguing”. By this they mean, I guess, interacting with others to share reviews: if I liked this, perhaps you might, too.
The Goodreads concept clearly worked for books, and has spawned imitators, such as Letterboxd for films (founded 2011). Goodreads has more in common with other social media such as LinkedIn, X, Bluesky, and so on, in that it is focused on positive responses rather than negative, and enabling minimal responses, rather than genuine critique – it is, after all, Goodreads, rather than Badreads, or just Reads. So much of social media is based around that all-embracing but rather meaningless concept of “like”. What does it mean to “like” Wuthering Heights? Or Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano, one of the most harrowing accounts of alcohol addiction ever penned? Nonetheless, you can appreciate the intention behind likes: they are almost instantaneous, even if they reduce reading to a consumer act, in which the only responses are “like” or “not like” (and not commenting at all is almost the equivalent of “not like”). Mind you, I was intrigued to see there was a list of the worst books of all time, but I was disappointed to find no more critique there than in the positive reviews. But let’s see how Goodreads actually works.
Goodreads in practice
I signed up as a new reader, and, as requested, I clicked on titles I had read and enjoyed – I listed 38 titles, plus seven books I hadn’t read but wanted to read. Incidentally, I noticed that books are displayed by their cover, rather than by any text. If you hover your cursor over the cover you see the title, but the initial response is based on the cover design, rather than the book.
One of the books I stated I liked was John Ruskin’s Mornings in Florence, which was included in the Goodreads collection. This is a late work in which Ruskin attempts to provide a highly idiosyncratic and opinionated guided tour of a much-visited city, in a style that would send most guidebook publishers wild with indignation. His recommendations (and condemnations) are blunt; of Santa Croce, one of the major churches of Florence, he writes:
Look up at the roof … You will return home with a general impression that Santa Croce is, some¬ how, the ugliest Gothic church you ever were in. Well, that is really so; and now, will you take the pains to see why?
Prose as stark as this makes you realise how tame the guidebooks are. For all his faults, Ruskin is a writer who you cannot fail to respond to. His is a hard act to follow. The next time I logged in, I hoped optimistically for a recommendation or two, and I hoped to find out of there was anything with the same tone. Here is the first title Goodreads proposed to me:
If that’s relevant, then I’m a Dutchman. When you click on “all books similar to Mornings in Florence”, you see the following carefully selected list:
These books, however “good” they might be, have no link with Ruskin’s Mornings in Florence. Yet there should be no lack of customer data, to carry out a “if you liked this, you should like that” analysis. Goodreads has probably the largest imaginable list of readers and their books. They claim no fewer than 6,291,936 votes were cast for the Readers’ Favourite Books of 2024.
Emphasis on fiction
Goodreads is unashamedly about popular books. Visit any local public library and you will see the majority of books are fiction. Goodreads, correspondingly, has many categories for fiction – at least eight. In contrast, there is just one category for “non-fiction”, and one category for “history and biography”.
Users are encouraged to create subject lists, and their own categories. Dubious categories include “The Most Anticipated Fall Books: the season’s biggest titles according to readers”. Lists of books that have not yet been published is a classic publisher’s marketing department ploy, enthusiastically supported by national newspapers eager to find some free copy. The Goodreads forthcoming books category links to an advertorial section, with, unsurprisingly, a link to Amazon to buy it.
There is a “community” section, but this includes such questions as “Who was your favorite character in Little Women?” In addition, the community list appears to be hopelessly compromised, through being unmoderated. Comments on William Dalrymple’s The Anarchy included “Best Corporate Wear and Workwear Clothing and Mens [sic] Polo Shirts”, a link I didn’t click on. Clearly, nobody is moderating these comments.
Not all the groups are dubious. There is a Goodreads Librarians Group, comprising “volunteers who help ensure the accuracy of information about books and authors in the Goodreads’ catalog”. But that simply makes me feel sorry that librarians devote time and energy to a commercial site that has little or no genuine interest in readers.
Conclusion
If I want a good read, I won’t be turning to Goodreads any time soon to get a recommendation. It’s a shameless commercial ploy to turn readers into consumers and social media subjects: there is more to life than liking something. I want to hear what other readers have to say about a book, but I don’t want it reduced to a simple tag of “good” or “bad”, or even stars between one and five, which is what Goodreads ultimately wants you to provide.
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