I am obsessed with reading.   I am always reading, thinking about reading, talking about reading, or planning what to read next. If you are a fellow reader, I have a great tool for you! Goodreads is an online platform that allows you to keep track of the books you have read, the books you want to read, and what your friends are reading.  You can even get recommendations based on books you have read.  If you are book obsessed like me, Goodreads is a great tool for you.

When you make a GoodReads profile, here’s what it looks like.

This is my profile.  I include some personal information (like my age and where I live) because I like to know what people other people my age or in my area are reading.  I also include a short description and a picture. You can control the amount of information you share. On my profile page, you can see a list of all of my bookshelves and a list of my friends.

My Bookshelves

My favorite part about GoodReads is the bookshelves.  When you sign up, you are given a basic set of bookshelves (read, to-read, and currently-reading), but you can create as many as you want.  A few of the ones I have created are memoir, cookbooks, and historical-fiction.  

I use the to-read shelf to keep track of books I would like to read in the future.  Whenever a library customer or one of the staff members here at PML recommends a book, I pop it on my to-read list.  When I am looking for something to read, I go straight to this list.  I don’t know if I will ever get to them all since I add books to my to-read shelf weekly, but I can certainly try!

When you finish reading a book

Once you finish reading a book, you mark it as “read” and give it a rating out of 5 stars. You can also write a review.  When you pull up a book’s name, you can see all sorts of information about it, like the description and average rating information.  On the right side of the page, you will see similar books.  Scroll down and you can see comments from other readers, quotes, and trivia.  If you click on the author’s name, you can read their biography and see their other books.  So basically, everything you need in your reading life can be found in one area.

Recommendations

When you can’t decide what to read next, you can check out recommendations from GoodReads. For the recommendations to work best, you’ll need to have established a good track record of sorting your books by shelves and rating the books you read.  The more you add to GoodReads, the more accurate your recommendations will be.  

Do you want to know another great source for finding your next great read?  The answer is your local librarian!  We don’t like books.  We LOVE them.  We love to recommend books, talk about books, curl up with a good book….you get the idea.  Recommending books makes our day.  If there is a book you’ve heard about and want to read, ask us and we can get it for you.  
GoodReads actually has a ton of additional features like a yearly Book Challenge, author events, giveaways and The Never Ending Book Quiz.  I highly encourage you to give it a try.  If you want to see my reviews, check out my GoodReads page!