this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2023
12 points (100.0% liked)

Literature

726 readers
1 users here now

Pretty straightforward: books and literature of all stripes can be discussed here.

If you're interested in posting your own writing, formal or informal, check out the Writing community!


This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

I'm still on Goodreads but it's so slow, the app's just an even slower webview of the site and the redesign has made me have to click more to do what I want.

What's the alternative? Obviously we're on the fediverse and I see people talking about Bookwyrm.

I used Anobii till 2010 and I can't remember why I left but it's still there. I've poked StoryGraph a bit but it was lacking several of the books I wanted to add.

There must be more! What do you use/recommend?

all 24 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Been using Openreads, an open source app for android.πŸ˜…

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

I must confess to being somewhat disappointed by BookWyrm; however I think it's still very early days over there. I wish them all the luck in the world, and hope they can dethrone Goodreads which is owned by amazon and is therefore evil. I'll be checking on them periodically to see how they progress.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

@[email protected] I used to use #Anobii as well, it was far better than #Goodreads in its early days, unfortunately, the latter overtook them. Now, most of my shelves are on Goodreads.

You can go self-hosting mode. You can self-host #BookWyrm, or the traditional, ever reliable, #Calibre. ^_^ I no longer use Calibre because Goodreads.

On the BookWyrm side of things, it can import your books from Goodreads.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

@youronlyone
@Deebster The only thing I really really miss with #BookWyrm is an API, I want to be able to automatically synchronize my shelves and individual book status/progress with both #Calibre and #KOReader.

There is an open issue on the subject, so 🀞

https://github.com/bookwyrm-social/bookwyrm/issues/785

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

@[email protected] True that. Hopefully it will come. I want to remove my reliance on Goodreads since I'm not using it other than to track. And the authors I follow are more active outside of Goodreads. πŸ˜… (Some are even here on the fediverse network.)

@[email protected]

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

#Calibre

As in the ebook manager? I don't see any way to track your reading or other lists on there. Is it a plugin, or are we talking about different Calibres?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You can do it pretty easily in Calibre with custom columns for reading status, rating, etc. For Kobo users, the KoboTouchExtended plugin syncs reading status automatically (I'm sure there's some equivalent for other ereader brands).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

ah, I didn't realise that custom columns was a thing you could do! Makes sense then. I might see if there's a way automate adding all my last read dates into a column.

I guess you can only track books you have as an ebook, so no dead-tree versions or to-read lists.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

If you really wanted to track books you don't have digitally, I guess you could use a dummy file (even a blank txt could work) and use Calibre itself to add all the metadata. It's far from ideal, though.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

I started using Obsidian with Dataview plugin.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I'm also on bookwyrm, specifically bookrastinating

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Absolutely nothing. I probably should though. Or at least something to find some new interesting books.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Well, you don't have to. I like to be able to answer when I've read a book - or, increasingly, whether I've read a book. Apparently there are books I enjoyed while reading but made zero impression on my long-term memory.

[–] FantasticFox 3 points 1 year ago

I use Goodreads, I have used it since like 2010 or something so I have all my books there. Hopefully, we get some good alternatives though as Goodreads has become really slow, it feels like using the Internet in the 90's.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I just started using Bookwyrm. Not the best app ever but it's federated and relatively new, so I'm giving it time. My wife uses Goodreads with her friends but I don't want to support Amazon any more than I already do.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I use the strictly offline Book Tracker app on my iPhone. I don’t really care about reviews or the social features, I just want an overview and some stats about my reading.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I was using Storygraph for a little while once I decided I no longer wanted to use Goodreads due to being owned by Amazon.

Then I tried Openreads for a short time, before realising I missed some of the social elements of the first two.

Finally settled on a local BookWyrm instance, Rambling Readers, which I'm happy with. It sometimes requires a bit of manual editing of books, but the more people use BookWyrm and contribute, the less often that should be necessary.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

@Deebster Just a markdown styled table in a local file, easy to convert to csv or excel

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

At this point, honestly just a spreadsheet that gets synced from laptop to phone with syncthing. Boring but effective.πŸ“š

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

For comics / graphic novels, League of comic geeks

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Readwise/Reader and that syncs to Obsidian. Been loving this combo.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I use Librarything - I tried Bookwyrm but it could not handle the size of my import and there doesn't seem to be any mass-edit options that would let me fix it. Similar situation with Storygraph.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

How many books are we talking about here?