One of the best books I've read in the last 6 months is . .

You don’t have to use the social aspect of goodreads. I don’t, although I do have a bunch of goodreads “friends”. I get to see their books, with any reviews they put up. I just ignore it (really easy to ignore the feed and just use your booklist.)

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I love the library idea. One of the systems I belong to has a reading history, but the other doesn’t, and it is the one I use more. That would definitely be my first choice.

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@ignatius I do the same - keep notes or write a small review but it’s mostly for myself so that I can remember what I liked or didn’t like about a particular book or author. I also have about 75 shelves where I classify books I have read by subject matter, setting, genre, etc - sometimes I can’t remember the name of a book but I remember it was set in Scotland or Africa so I can look at a particular shelf of mine to find the book more easily. I love that I can also quickly filter by rating, date read, author, etc.

@garland you can either delete your friends or you can change your settings so that your activity does not show up in your friends’ feeds. If you haven’t used GR in ages, you could probably just delete all your friends and they wouldn’t even realize it.

I don’t “converse” with friends on GR about books I’m reading. I’m fairly active on GR - I use it to see what my friends are reading and how they rate what they read (helpful for those who share my reading tastes). I also follow a few strangers with similar reading taste who read/review books. I also sign up for book giveaways, etc. But despite regular use, I don’t have interactions/conversations with my friends on GR.

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Oh … no one recommends books in that way to me on Goodreads. It’s quite similar to here: a page that lists what my friend read; the star rating shows if they liked it or not and, if they chose to leave a review or whatever it shows.

Again similar to this thread where people list the books and maybe add a note or two. And you don’t have to do that at all … I just like to see what my daughters (both huge readers) are reading at the moment and vice versa + plus a few friends. But we seldom carry it further than that.

And you can always make your Goodreads account totally private - for curmudgeonly you alone. :wink:

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I started Goodreads about 10 years ago. One of my daughters started her Goodreads account the year after she graduated law school. She wanted her record of books to start at that point and not bother with books read previously. I followed her lead and started with the new year. I now have a record of all I’ve read since that point.

Apparently you can’t make it private to friends. I guess I should just be more social, lol.

But you can … just don’t list any friends. I don’t list most of mine, even the readers. I’m semi-curmudgeonly. :joy:

You can remove friends (I don’t think they will know you did it) and then you will have the clean slate you want. Since you never posted anything before, they won’t even notice you are gone.

https://help.goodreads.com/s/article/How-do-I-remove-a-friend-1553870937067

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Being completely honest. I have one particular connection who I wouldnt want to hurt the feelings of, but she tends to want to over-connect and can be very assertive about it. I know she’ll notice if I show up, and I will bet good money she’ll figure it out if I delete her. That’s the crux of the matter.

Okay, I am a terrible person. But I don’t want to clog this thread, so I’ll figure it out–thanks for the suggestions! :slight_smile:

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I don’t have any friends on Goodreads. It doesn’t seem to “big brother” you the way FB does and keep suggesting friends. The majority of the people I know use it for personal tracking.

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I had one fun story this year, referring to my book list with a college aged niece. One excellent book I almost didn’t mention to her (thinking she’d not be interested) ended up being one she really liked… author had been one of her professors.

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Just pulled up a secondary email and started my new stealth Goodreads. Thanks all for your patience!

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Can I friend you? Just kidding! :upside_down_face:

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I did a rough count of the books I got from the library this year on just Overdrive (we are transitioning to Libby and I don’t know where to look for my ‘read’ list there) and it seems I read about 44 new books. Plus about 50-100 romances. Maybe a few more.
My county library tracks the books that I read but I borrow books from a couple of different library systems, including the Open Library, so it’s hard to get a complete list. I don’t use Goodreads either (except for my main library list) but it seems like a great tool. 2023 may be the year I start!

There were several books that I enjoyed reading this year, based on recommendations here, suggestions from IRL friends and a few as part of the CC book club.

One of my favorites was The Girl in His Shadow by Audrey Blake. I have the sequel by the same authors in my queue, and it may be the first book that I read in 2023.

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I adored These Precious Days. I went to an event featuring an author I personally know in September at Parnassus Books. Ann Patchett is one of the owners and was at the event. Inside I was dying to speak to her to share how much I loved that book, but I just didn’t have the nerve. I have The Dutch House on my Kindle and need to get to it soon.

I am only friends with my children and their spouses on Goodreads. I enjoy knowing what they are reading, but I have no interest in engaging with other people on that platform. My primary purpose for using it is to track my reading and to make sure I don’t accidentally download a previously read title.

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I also enjoyed The Girl in His Shadow, but somehow haven’t gotten around to reading the sequel. Too many books!

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I’m a little envious of those of you who have read so many books - but also I’m not someone to take the time to read 100 books - nothing against it, that is just beyond me and my dedication to reading!

I haven’t looked but I will have read in the 15ish range. Just fine for me. :slight_smile:

I have a couple friends on Goodreads - they probably friended me - but honestly I never look at their pages, I don’t get emails about their choices or anything. It’s a non event as far as I’m concerned. It is TOTALLY OK to not turn every helpful webpage into a social media opportunity!

I would also never know if someone deleted me as a friend - I just don’t even look at that part of Goodreads.

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Much of my “reading” is in the form of audiobooks while I am doing the laundry, cleaning the kitchen, all those mindless activities that must be done and can prevent us from curling up with a good book at the end of the day.

That one is so good, and the audio is read by Tom Hanks.

I am going to see Fredrik Backman speak next moth, so I have to get going with The Winners since I loved Beartown and its sequel.

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I don’t really keep track, I guess I could go back to Goodreads. I read and listen to almost all of my books through Libby, so I can look at my history there. Although my husband also uses my account. :roll_eyes:

The House in the Cerulean Sea (great audio)
The Midnight Library
Run Rose Run (loved the audio cast)
Black Cake
Heavy

But those are the more “real” books, I read a lot of romance and YA mystery too. I liked:

One of Us Is Lying
Survive the Night
And anything by Kristen Proby

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I think 15-ish books is a fine amount. Admittedly when I was working my annual total was probably about 3. (Except for a few years, when I decided to sample some of the books my kids were reading around ages 10 to 14.)

I have a friend who reads 100 books per year, but that would be too much for me even in retirement. I’ll try for 50 again this year, but hoping to mix in more non-fiction. Probably 90% of my books have been fiction, including 6 for the CC bimonthly discussions and about 8 for a zoom book club with friends.