Goodreads: Book Reviews 12+

On the whole this app is definitely worth getting. You can get honest reviews on books you are thinking of reading and it’s just a great place to talk with one another about books you have read. It’s also a great way to track books you have read and also keep note of books you want to read. However the ONLY really annoying thing about it is the books in a year challenge. I love the idea of setting yourself a target for the books you should read this year but it seems to take ages to actually update it. For instance I have read 4 books and it’s still saying I’ve only read 1. At this point it’s annoying because I’ve seen other reviews with this same issue too and I don’t think it would be that much effort to tweak it.

I was introduced to GoodReads by my 15 year old Granddaughter. It is a very good app and I am enjoying it for the most part. What I find frustrating and would ask the developers could the either do it automatically or have the option to list books by an Author AND have his Character Series listed in Series order. Take James Patterson for example - he has a lot of Novels with Alex Cross and likewise Jack Morgan in the Private Series. When looking at his books using by Author the listing is all over the place - #15 might be listed before #2 in the Series with books from all his other Character/Theme Series mingled in. I am a person who likes to & tries to read a Series in order since the Author is carrying some details from earlier books into the later ones. I also find the same book title listed more than once and it wasn’t because it was included in a compilation set. If you could add this enhancement suggestion it would make a very good app even better and more useful!

As much as I like Goodreads and it helps me track my reads, and find out about new books as well as keep up with my friends opinions, I despise the impossibility of giving half stars. It should be allowed to give half stars to books because not every book deserves a 5 but it doesn’t mean it is a 4… I think that a lot of reviewer struggle a lot with the lack of flexibility in book reviewing and therefore a lot of books have higher or lower ratings than they deserve, which skews the whole thing.
Another thing missing is that there is very little statistics as to the genre mostly read, or types of books with highest ratings, authors specifications etc, to compare your reads of the month/year/in general. It would be helpful if some additional statistics, with page number, book number etc could be added to the summary of books read and to the yearly challenges…
Otherwise highly recommend for tracking your progress!