Remy Rant: My Love/Hate Relationship With GoodReads (New Feature)

Now, many of you who are reading this are thinking, Whaaaaaaaat??  Whaaaaaaat is this? (Read very dramatically with emphasis on the *H*)  

Well people, I’m going to answer your questions!  I was inspired by my friend Emma over at Spun With Words when she posted her new feature Sunday Spiel.  I realized that I don’t really have any regular features or something like it on my blog.  So I started brainstorming.  Then, after re-reading her post I got caught up in the fact that sometimes people review books that they didn’t finish, and how sometimes people on Goodreads rate books that they didn’t finish, and then it affects the overall rating of the book, and it bugs me so much, and so many other things bug me about Goodreads, but I love it so much and–hold up.  That was a SUPER long run-on sentence and I’m sorry.  I just don’t think that there is a better way to express my chain of thought.  Haha, get it? Chain instead of train? Oh never mind. 

Anyway, I do enjoy ranting about things, in the right setting of course, so my new feature was born: Remy Rant!  Get it?  Because I’m Remy and I’m Ranting?  Maybe I should just stop making awful jokes in my blog posts…

Now that I’ve explained what Remy Rants are, and why I’m doing them, I just want to dive into my topic: My Love/Hate Relationship With Goodreads.

I joined Goodreads in late 2012, at least I think, after being prompted by a group of friends.  They all were using it, and loved so I thought, what the heck, it sounds really cool right?  And it is!  There are so many things that I love about Goodreads!  I love how I can have an actual list of books that I want to read, I love how I can follow the blogs of authors I like right from the site, I love how they host contests with ARCs, I love how I can see in my feed what my friends want to read, I love how I can see what my friends are thinking about a book as they read it, I love seeing my friends reviews as soon as they review them, I love seeing the overall ratings of books, I love that you have access to all the different covers in one convenient place, I love the Goodreads app and how I can scan books with it, I love that I can have an annual goal of how many books I want to read and that it keeps track for me, I love that I can mark a book as a to-read even if it hasn’t come out yet, I love that I can categorize my books into different groups, and I love so many other things. (Sorry again for my tendency to run on.  *Feeling Sheepish*)     

Despite all of these things that I love, there are some things that I hate.  Such as:

1.  People who don’t finish reading a book can review it and distort the overall rating, because no offense, you can’t review a book that you didn’t finish like you finished it.  You have to acknowledge in your review that you didn’t finish it, and you shouldn’t give it a star rating because that distorts the statistics!!!!  And that drives me crazy. 

2. I don’t like how you can rate a book before it’s already come out. I understand that this is probably for the purposes of Book Reviewers like myself who actually have access to ARCs, but when I see that a book is already rated 5 stars and I go to the reviews and people are saying, “OH MY GOSH I LOVE BLAH BLAH AUTHOR AND I CAN’T WAIT FOR THIS BOOK TO COME OUT!!!!”–Hold up, you can’t rate something that you haven’t read!  All books by the same author are not written equal!  There are books by some of my favorite authors that I’ve hated, and there are books that I’ve hated, but when I’ve read another book by that same author I’ve liked it.  So you can’t just assume that you’re going to like a book just because you like the author.  You can sort of guess, but not all out assume. Nuh-uh.  If you’re guilty of this, pleeeeeeeeease stop.  

3.  A great aspect of Goodreads is their Listopia, so why can’t I access it from the app?

4.  The quotes system needs to be organized better.  I love saving my favorite book quotes, but it’s really hard to search for them!  Sometimes I’ll search, and be all “Oh it’s not there, I’ll just create it!”  But then it won’t let me because it’s embedded into a longer quote.  I don’t need the whole chapter* (exaggerating for emphasis), I just want the sentence or two that I found meaningful.  

4.  How come sometimes I mark something as finished from the app and it doesn’t transfer over to the main site?  It’s supposed to be the same thing!

5.  This is only slightly annoying, and I understand that it is for privacy reasons, but do I really have to validate my password every time I try and read my messages?!

I’m sure that there are more things that I could go on about, but that pretty much sums up my love/hate realtionship with Goodreads.  Needless to say I’m going to suck it up and deal with the aspects I don’t like about it, because all in all, I do love Goodreads.

Do you have a Goodreads?  Let me know why or why not!  Do you have a rant about Goodreads?  Share your opinion in the comments!

~Remy