Time To Talk! How Do YOU Goodreads?

Posted August 25, 2013 by Asheley in Uncategorized / 15 Comments



I’m drinking the coffee RIGHT NOW as I type this.
It tastes SO YUMMY.
I really am a great coffee maker. 



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Just last week the Top Ten Tuesday**topic was


Ten Things That Make Life 

As A Reader & Book Blogger Easier!


Y’all, I had so much fun with that one! I mean, I think I took an approach far different than most – I approached the post more from the perspective of a READER than from the perspective of a BLOGGER. I did throw in ten things from both, but still – my post was a mish-mash of super-simple reader-friendly things. It was fun! Anyway, the point of me saying this is that on pretty much every post I visited had Goodreads on it, and most of those posts had Goodreads as their #1 spot – mine included! 

 

I used this screenshot of the app on my phone, but the truth is that I use Goodreads on my phone AND my computer. My computer tells me that it is it is my most-visited site and WHOA this is not a shock to me


I even have a Goodreads window open as I type this. 
I will have a Goodreads window open all day. 
And tomorrow. And the next day. 
It’s kind of funny. 

HOWEVER. 

I would like to admit that I am a very disorganized Goodreads user. 
Very disorganized. 
But I’d very much like to be better. 
I have a reason for my disorganization with it. 
I believe it is a good reason. 

I’d like to be honest with you guys about it and just get it out there. 

But first…

The ways I use Goodreads most often

1. Um, yes, I’m tracking whether or not I meet my goal for the year. Check it.

2013 Reading Challenge


Asheley has
completed her goal of reading 150 books in 2013!
hide


Okay, clearly I set my goal a little low for the way I read – next year I will consider that I’ve begun to read way more audiobooks and more books in general and will set my goal higher! 

I’m proud of my progress but am very serious about marking a book ‘read’ when I finish it or when I blog on it. (I’m not the best at marking it read when I finish it exactly but if it isn’t marked read by the time I blog on it, I’ll do it then.This is sloppy in my opinion, you guys, and I want to be better about it. The first step is admitting it.)  

2. I love seeing what everyone else is reading, or at least those of you that read similarly to me! I like seeing what you’re reading because then, I get a good idea sometimes for books that I didn’t even know existed! 

3. I like to use Goodreads-generated lists and what’s trending to sometimes see what I want to read next. I can’t be the only one that does this. 

4. I ALWAYS check ratings on a book before I buy it
(I NEVER EVER EVER go by Amazon ratings, period, that is all.) 

I don’t buy books as often as you might think because my book budget is quite low, so the ratings are important – again, particularly the ratings of the reading friends that read similarly to me. Those precious dollars that I spend need to be spend wisely, ya know? 

5. I crosspost reviews, but I’m a little behind. 
(insert smiley face here, take sip of coffee) 

This isn’t all of the ways that I use Goodreads, but this is a good idea. 

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I’d like to utilize Goodreads more efficiently by

1. Listing all of the books that I own on Goodreads. 
I am SO FAR from this goal. 

2. Shelving all of my books appropriately. I stink at this. 

3. Finishing with the crossposting! This is attainable. 

4. Converse with people on Goodreads.

There are other ways, but these are probably the main ways. 


So why haven’t I done these things? 


I have not really taken the steps to include all of my books Goodreads 
OR to shelve them accurately. 


This is because I’m absolutely horrified that I will spam everyone’s accounts and feed. You all know as well as I do that everyone hates that. But the truth is that I don’t even know if that happens – do you? 


I know that if you add books to your to-read, it shows up. So if I start adding all of the books I own – BOOM. Spam. Right? 


But what if I go thru and shelve all of my books? 
Does that spam everyone as well? 


Can someone help me with an idea of how to reach my goals? 
I think they’re simple. 


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BLOGGERS & READERS: 
How do you use Goodreads? 
I really want to know


I may find an idea or two that works well for me. After all, it is my most-visited site as told to me by Google Chrome, and I totally trust that business.  

I freaking love Goodreads. Help me be more efficient! 
We’re all friends here! 

Also, I certainly wouldn’t mind comments and stuff on Goodreads just like on my blog. I notice that some people have rather large threads. It’s just another medium for talking books, in my opinion. So feel free to talk away!

**Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by the gals over at The Broke and the Bookish and is a feature that occurs weekly, on Tuesdays (obviously) that is super fun and allows for lots of list-making about bookish topics. You can go HERE to read more about it, and I think you should! 


 

Asheley

About Asheley

Asheley is a Southern girl. She loves Carolina blue skies, Ben & Jerry's ice cream, and NC craft beer. She loves all things history but prefers books over everything.

You can find her somewhere in North Carolina, daydreaming about the ocean.

Find Asheley on Litsy @intothehallofbooks!

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15 responses to “Time To Talk! How Do YOU Goodreads?

  1. I rarely ever read my Goodreads feed – so nothing seems spammy to me. I say if you want to do it – do it! I am not good at marking the right start & finish date either, but I'm more concerned with the month than the specific day of reading. I definitelydon't shelve books according to genre – just read or currently reading * yikes * I guess I;m a pretty disorganized Goodreads user too.

    Tanya Patrice
    Girlxoxo.com

  2. It's so funny because I just wrote a Goodreads focused post last week for when I come back from my hiatus (I'm trying to work ahead so when I'm in uni I don't get overwhelmed)! But it's a slightly different focus about how I'm Goodreads fail.

    Anyways, you're doing better than me! Isn't there a way that when you click a book as read you can unmark the "add to my update feed" so it doesn't show up in everyone's feed? I'm pretty sure? Then you could do your cross posting and shelving and it won't show up and spam everyone? Of course, I could be wrong because it seems a lot of people don't do that and I would think they would notice it and spare everyone the spam if it worked. I don't know! haha.

  3. I'm not sure if all of that stuff spams people's feeds…but I feel like marking the books you own won't necessarily show up on the feed. I think only the three "main" shelves do: to-read, currently reading, and read.

    I'm really proud of myself because I only have 3 more months to catch up on crossposting (in July, I had 7.5 so big improvement!) I am also very good about updating when I finish a book-I like to have the correct date on there.

    Shelving is hard though-I don't really like all the shelves I currently have but to update them would take such a long time so I'm not sure I'll ever be motivated enough to fix that.

  4. Mainly I just love using Goodreads so I can talk to other people who love reading the same kind of books as me, as I have no one in real life to talk with who likes that sort of thing. I don't blame you for not using Amazon reviews! I hate how they can be voted up or down, it's really not fair. I also use it to shelve upcoming releases so I don't forget to buy something. 🙂

  5. Asheley, like you I use GR for the ratings, lists, challenges, discussions, and mostly reviews. I sort of organized my shelves last year and highly recommend it. No one is going to hate you for the notification spam – trust me. I have an issue where I look at my TBR Pile at get worried, so I had to organize it out into Classics, Books I Own and Need to Read, and Not Yet Released Shelves. It helps me to really see how many of my books are ones that I can read or have to wait to read. I also have a separate shelf of books with cliffhangers so I know to avoid those until their sequels release. Mostly, though, GR is a place for me to discover new books and generate discussion, which I love. I'm so behind on cross-posting (MONTHS) that I've given up doing it all together. I'm too lazy to catch up, but I love that website and community nevertheless. 🙂

  6. Hmm. I recently added shelves for different publishers (mainly to the upcoming releases on my TBR list) and I don't think it spammed everyone. And couldn't you temporarily turn off any email/ twitter feed notifications while your doing that just in case? Just a thought.

    I use Goodreads a lot too. Mostly from my computer, it doesn't like my cell phone much. I always mark books finished too, and I get really huffy when my blog doesn't show the accurate number of book's read on my GR gadget (grrrr….) I'm at about 69% into reaching my year end goal. Perfectly doable:)

    I love all the shelves I can add. I have a "no cover image yet" file that I go to all the time when I am making my Cover Reveal posts. I think one thing I would like to see different is that if I DNF a book, I still have to mark it as 'read' to get it out of my Currently Reading queue. Then I have to subtract that book when counting up my year end book's read. Does anyone else have this problem? I actually don't DNF books that often but still.

    Great discussion post, A:)

  7. I love using Goodreads too! Like you, I mostly use it just to track my reading goals (which I just had to raise because I passed it last week) and to keep track of the books I've read and that I own or want to buy.

    For the most part, I've been working on sorting my books into shelves. I've also been adding the books I own in increments, so that it's not too overwhelming. I need to get better at cross-posting though!

    I liked reading this post a lot because I could relate to it. Hopefully, you get lots of helpful tips about how to use Goodreads! (I don't think I contributed, but I wanted to let you know that I totally get where you're coming from.)

  8. I couldn't live without Goodreads. I could let my blog go before I could let Goodreads go. (*gasp!*)

    I do massive shelving updates sometimes. Before I do, I go into edit profile > feeds > and uncheck the box for "Add a book to your shelves" and for "Add a new status to a book I'm reading". Then I add and move books to my heart's content. As soon as I'm done, I recheck those boxes and I'm good to go. 🙂 Hope that helps!

  9. I love this post so much, Ash. I know we talked about it a bit the day you posted, but I'm EXACTLY like you in that I have Goodreads open all the time and I check it constantly on my phone as well. I'm always looking up book ratings and seeing what my friends said about them. I also love to track what I read and add books to my to be read shelf. HOWEVER, I am horrible at making shelves besides that. Basically mine are a terrible terrible mess. I think I need to go back through each book and re-shelve it completely. I bet you could turn off notifications for a while if you wanted to do that? Just a thought. I'm also not terribly great about cross posting, though I try to remember to do it. It's just another step in my busy schedule.

    I also tend to always post my review on my blog first and then goodreads, but I know some people post on goodreads whenever they write it and I think that helps them start conversations. I'd also like to increase discussions there, but I do love that I have a great group of blogger friends who like to discuss books with me. If I don't post a full review right away, I've been trying to be better about putting up something of what I thought, so that people could maybe comment.

    Basically, I needed this post to encourage myself to some action on the Goodreads front. BUT I'm pretty sure I'd have to set aside a couple of DAYS to get it done, and right now I don't have the time honestly. Thanks for this insightful post, friend!

  10. I'm with Tanya – I never read my feed so I don't care what people do. I am trying to do better about using it to interact with other people, especially by noticing what other people are reading. Right now I mostly just use it to track my own reading and to read reviews of books I'm considering.

  11. What a great topic! Did you see that @BookAddictGuide is doing a survey about GR right now?

    I use Goodreads to organize everything, keep track of who recommends me books, double link our reviews, see what my friends are reading, etc.

    I love to keep track of my pages. I feel like it's a nice way for people to connect with you and leave comments and that's always nice. I feel like GR is the social media platform for the book lovers, the nice one. 🙂

    ALSO LOVE THE SCANNING FEATURE. IT IS SO OBSESSIVE.

    I honestly think GR is an awesome tool for bloggers. I wish some would utilize it more, and also I am hoping that integration with Amazon makes it more user friendly. I feel like it never works the same way twice and that drives me crazy.

    Great topic, lady!

  12. Loved this post, A! I also use it to track what I'm reading and to see what others are reading. Like you, I'm also a total stickler for checking the Goodreads rating before buying a book. I may not read reviews of it, but I always at least glance at it. Above a 4? Definitely buying. Below 3.5? Want to do more research before buying.

    I used to have a TON of shelves but then I got rid of most of them. I'm torn on whether or not I'm glad I did that. In some ways, I think I had too many and it was overwhelming me. In other ways, I think it was easier to see how my books broke down by genre, rating, etc. I do still have a number of shelves – I always shelve by adult / YA / non-fiction and then add to my Read In [Year] shelf since the Goodreads Challenge doesn't always keep an accurate count if I re-read a book within the same year.

    My favorite, favorite, favorite thing I did on Goodreads was create a new exclusive shelf (which means it's like To Read, Read, Currently Reading – where a book can only be on one of them at a given time) that I titled Wishlist. I did this so that my To Read shelf is ONLY books I own that I need to read. And Wishlist is books I don't currently own but want to read. I did it because I would get frustrated when my too read count went really high based solely on the fact that I wanted to "save" a bunch of books. I'm really glad I made that change because it helps me keep better track of what's actually in my house/on my Kindle that needs to be read.

    I do want to get better at marking what books I got from the library, read on my Kindle, own, borrowed, etc., but I feel like that would take a ton of work to update it all.

    I'm also HORRIBLE at staying on top of cross-posting, so that's always on my to do list!

    Anyway, loved this post so much!

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