Week four. Why I hate Goodreads (in case you wanted to know)

I am glad we are using Goodreads as an assignment,  I have been a member of Goodreads for years,  but in the last two I have pretty much avoided it.   When it started I found it to be a useful tool but the more I used it and the more commercial it became, the less likely I am to use it for anything now.  But as it has become the focus of week four,   I guess I will share my thoughts.

Things I hate about good reads:

Inappropriate tagging. 

Because Goodreads is based on users reviews,  they can tag anything with any tag they want.  I usually like to search for mysteries,  because I read them and they are my favorite genre.  When I look on the page for mystery,  I am assaulted with 17 steampunk titles,  5 romances,  6 mainstream authors,  and maybe 5 overly popular thriller writers that I don't enjoy.   Not one I would classify as a "mystery".  Sure, there may be a mystery embedded in there somewhere but it is not the main appeal of the book for me.   I don't have time to wade through all of that to find exactly what I am looking for.

Listmainia and the Twilighters.

Yes, you can make lists of books you think other people should read.  When Twilight was popular, EVERY SINGLE list had a twilight title as one of the books I was expected to read, and every time I logged in, this list was first and foremost on my page as if everything I was currently reading would be a read alike for Twilight.   We all know that this is not so, and I got sick of looking at the cover of the book.

Desperate Ebook authors:

They about on Goodreads and always want to "friend" you so you buy their book.  You get friend requests all the time from people you don't know or care to know, and they want you to purchase their books.  Many of the books are only available by Ebook and would not even be purchased by the library system, so you have to wade through those to get to the books you can actually use in your day to day activity.

Improperly written or weighted reviews.

Let's face it, all reviews are not created equally,  you have to read quite a lot of reviews by people who either overly enjoy or hate a title,  don't offer any pertinent information,  or are quite possibly a publisher plant who is only trying to sell a title.    And beware of Spoilers.  Some people don't understand when too much information is too much information.


In conclusion, I think that Goodreads can be useful  if you are keeping a shelf of books to keep tabs on what you read, but it is kind of overwhelming to use as a site to search for reviews or new things to read.   There really isn't any rhyme or reason to the categories, and like I said, you can tag a book any way you want and put it on any list you want, however inappropriate.    I much prefer review sources that are weighted and the books actually selected to fit the category described.