To Not Travel Is Like Reading One Page of a Book
There's naught like finding the perfect read: a folio-turner that keeps you hooked and upwardly all night because yous tin't put it down; a novel that takes yous to a afar, fascinating world and lets you escape from reality for a little while; or a book that teaches you lot about something you've been longing to learn about — like pizza making, dog preparation or career development.
Only finding the perfect book is no easy task. I have the feeling that sometimes I spend more than time figuring out what my next keen read will be than really reading. Because one time I find that rare novel that checks all of the boxes, I devour it.
I've developed certain tricks when information technology comes to discovering that great next book: asking my friends with similar reading tastes for recommendations; checking the new releases from some of my favorite authors; reading book recommendation lists from those authors; and visiting NPR's almanac, curated option Volume Concierge. But these concluding few years I've also turned to Goodreads.
Goodreads is a social network and book database that launched in January 2007. Amazon, which started its giant retailer business equally an online bookseller, bought Goodreads in 2013.
"Our mission is to help people discover and share books they love," Goodreads' website says. Goodreads' social network attribute lets you create an account, track what yous're reading and go along a log of it. Yous can as well add friends and see what they're reading. One of my favorite features is the "Reading Challenge." Every January yous can fix a number of books you want to read and then work your fashion toward that goal corporeality throughout the year. Setting a realistic notwithstanding somewhat challenging goal can be the perfect way to persuade yourself to read merely a little bit more, even if information technology'south but one or two more books than the previous year. And this is one of those competitions where you're merely measuring yourself against yourself.
You tin also just use Goodreads as a catalog to look up a book'southward author, publication appointment or number of pages.
Goodreads' Reviews, Ratings & Lists
In addition to tracking your progress and seeing what your friends on Goodreads are reading and favoriting, you can utilize this social network to come across what its millions of users (statistics website Statista estimated Goodreads had 90 million registered members in July 2019) are perusing and how much they're liking their reads. Need some more than help navigating the site? Here are some of Goodreads features that can help y'all choose your next book:
Reviews: Book reviews are one of Goodreads' nigh appealing offerings. And while those reviews are written by users, not professional book critics at major publications, some of those who write volume reviews practise it regularly. They may even be bloggers who read about specific topics or genres. Call up about information technology like the blazon of restaurant review you tin can go on Yelp.
Per Goodreads review guidelines, commercial reviews are non allowed. If a reviewer receives a complimentary copy of a book, they must disclose it in the review. Some reviewers receive advanced readers' copies (ARCs), which makes it possible for a review to hit Goodreads before a book's publication date.
Ratings: Lazy readers, like myself, prefer to give a book merely a ane-five star rating instead of writing an actual review to go with it. Most books take a bigger number of star ratings than bodily reviews. I trust Goodreads' users enough that I might avoid a book with a rating lower than 3.5 stars. Also, the bigger the number of ratings, the more reliable the metric tends to be.
I use ratings and reviews in conjunction to assistance me determine whether I should start reading something or non. One of the nearly recent reviews for the first book in the Bridgertons series, for example, already warns the reader nigh the book'due south near controversial passage. So, even if that book has a 3.89 rating, a review can help yous make a terminal decision. And yes, reviews might end up existence a bit spoilery. So exist careful when yous do your research.
Lists: They can exist created by users or the Goodreads' team and they are a good way to find reads in specific genres. If yous like a book, you can come across what lists that title is included on and observe something similar. There are lists for everything, from Scandinavian/Nordic Mysteries to Science Fiction Books by Female Authors or Food Books for Readers to Devour.
This is probably my favorite part of Goodreads. Each year users can choose their favorite books in different categories — Fiction, Mystery & Thriller, Fantasy, Romance, Scientific discipline & Technology, Historical Fiction, Horror, Sense of humor, and so on. Not merely is this a good manner of giving some love to the authors y'all've enjoyed reading, simply the winners and runner-ups also tend to be solid books to add to your list. (They might even help y'all with your holiday shopping.)
And while Goodreads has received its fair share of criticism for existence a chip outdated — I don't remember the last time the website or app were refreshed — I nevertheless can't encounter myself not using information technology. Information technology'south buggy sometimes and information technology lacks some usability features, but it sure has allowed me to discover authors and books I would have totally missed otherwise.
Source: https://www.ask.com/culture/goodreads-book-reviews?utm_content=params%3Ao%3D740004%26ad%3DdirN%26qo%3DserpIndex
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