I finally deleted my Goodreads account after years of using it, and honestly I wish I had done it sooner.
Part of it is that I fell into the trap of reading toward goals instead of reading for enjoyment. Page counts, yearly challenges, streaks… etc. It slowly turned reading into another productivity metric instead of something I did because I loved it. I also noticed I felt weird pressure to log everything, rate everything, and have an opinion ready, even when I just wanted to sit with a book and move on.
Another big reason is that I am actively trying to de-Amazon my life. The more I thought about it, the more Goodreads just felt tied into an ecosystem I no longer want to support, especially when it was also contributing to a mindset that was not great for me. On top of that, I felt like the recommendations and trends were slowly narrowing what I picked up instead of expanding it.
This does not mean I want to stay away from reading spaces or book discussions. I still love talking about books and seeing what others are reading. I have been experimenting with other, lower pressure ways to track my reading for a while now, and I genuinely do not regret deleting Goodreads at all. If anything, I feel like I should have done it years ago 🙂
by thestarryrai
21 Comments
I track stuff (with hardcover, not goodreads now), but I explicitly make my goals stupid so they don’t affect me, default to 4 stars unless I actively like or dislike a book, and only do a review when I feel like I want to. I also don’t track repeats because I don’t care.
I like being able to access my history, but I definitely am not interested in the gamification stuff or anything that makes it an obligation.
Edit: I actually probably won’t use the goal at all this year. I was used to needing it on goodreads to be able to see the books I read the past year in a convenient way, but hardcover has a detailed stats page that you can filter by year without it, so I don’t need it any more.
Even from the early days Goodreads was always way too in your face for me but was a pretty good resource for recommendations and some discussion
Once Amazon took them over it was all downhill. Same with IMDB
I think in the next year you will gravitate towards some sort of notebook where you can record your reading journey and a non-gamified fashion that is calm and rewarding for you.
And I think in the next 10 years you will gravitate back towards Goodreads but with a new attitude of just doing what you like to do and staying away from the things that made you sick last time.
I’ve never really used Goodreads for anything other than tracking my reading. At this point as I get back into reading more often and doing challenges it is something I find useful but I can see not using it in the future. I read on a Kindle so I’m already tied into Amazon and it’s just easy because it automatically updates good reads for me. So it doesn’t require much involvement from me which I like. I’ve had friends and family try to get me into other apps, but I’m not interested in more online social media, etc. I just need a tool to track my reading. Goodreads does that easily for me.
Happy for you! I find using the same Goodreads account I’ve had since 2008 and participating in the goals and challenges helps me read MORE and find MORE enjoyment from reading, but that’s just me! Different strokes for different folks and Happy Reading!
I set my goal to one book a year 🤷♂️
Same with most of social media accounts. Too many streak targets, etc
I switched to StoryGraph over a year ago. It even let me import my Goodreads data. I don’t rate or review but it’s helpful for tracking my read and to-read lists.
Deleted mine after six months. Never looked back.
I swear that site brings out the worst in me. It’s like it wants you to write mean shitty reviews.
I was like, why am I ruining my personal reading for a shitty website?
Fuck goodreads into the dirt.
I don’t track my reading either. There’s no need to stay on top of what I’ve already read. I just enjoy reading. If I love a book, I’ll remember.
I disagree that Goodreads is just a tool. It’s another Amazon selling app designed to resemble a tool.
Did you know you can use Goodreads without participating in reading challenges and other goals?
I like it as an easy tracker for books I’ve read and want to read. While I don’t like Amazon’s influence over it, I appreciate its algorithm. Goodreads is accurate enough that it has recommended many new authors and great books I never would have discovered on my own.
Like any tool, it’s as useful or as stressful as we make it.
I was thinking about doing something similar. My problem is sharing exactly what i am reading with any old auto added FB friend. If I want to read Morning Glory Milking Farm that’s my own damn business!
I do like to track what i read though. Is there any alternative that has a similar structure (like setting reading goals etc) but is a solo journey and not with my eleventy billion FB friends?
Feeling the same, I deliberately stopped using Goodreads at the start of the year.
I was logging 150-180 books a year, peaking to over 200 during lockdown.
So, free from pressure, how many books did I read in 2025? Zero. Not a single book.
Turns out, I need the push. I’ll be back on Goodreads in January.
I still use goodreads but I gave up on “X books a year” challenges when I realised it was directly influencing what I chose to read.
Kept putting off long/difficult books I wanted to read because I knew it’d put me behind on my reading challenge.
Dumb fucking way to be, god knows how I let a website contort my brain into that one.
I don’t understand the obsession with rating books. I read it, I either enjoy or I don’t, and move on to the next. When I ask this one particular person I know what she thinks of a book she recently read, all she can do is go to her Goodreads and tell me what she rated it. “Hmmm let me look. Oh, I gave it a 4 so I must have liked it”. That tells me zero about the subject matter or WHY she liked/disliked it. Simply regurgitating a score isn’t getting me interested in reading it.
As far as keeping track, a simple handwritten journal logging the titles and authors I’ve read is all I do.
It’s interesting how differently people experience things. I love stats and keep track of pretty much everything I can put into a list, so tracking reading makes it more enjoyable for me. The metrics are a fun little reward for doing something I already like doing, so I get some extra joy for free. Also, TBRs are great when your memory sucks.
This is almost the same set of reasons I don’t get an Apple watch.
For some reason, society wants us to devote *way* too much mental energy to tracking, analyzing, and cataloguing things that don’t call for it.
And then no one has the mental energy left to be on top of things that *are* important, like how government and industry are constantly colluding to make our lives shitty.
I almost think it’s a conspiracy.
I love the counter
– At the start of the year I set the goal to 100
– By may I was a few books a head
– last week I changed the goal to 90 (I’m on target)
I follow 3 people and if I am stuck on what to read they seem to read a lot more than me and things that I like
People talk of other challenges. I’ve seen them but not interested
Having said that, surely thare are more readers that do not use a goal setter in this world so whichever way that speaks to you is fine
I use Goodreads purely cos it’s there and I’m lazy to set up another account. It’s really just for my own tracking cos otherwise I’ll forget that I’ve read a book before and re-read it again and also to keep track of books I want to read (my TBR is insanely long).
I only started doing reviews this year but it’s really for my own record. So if anyone asks me for recommendations I can see what I liked/ dislike about a certain book. While it’s sometimes fun to see what my friends are reading I don’t really care. I also read very widely from a whole range of genres, from YA to more serious books and also some trashy books cos sometimes I just want to switch my brain off
Journaling is a great way to keep track of what you read and write down thoughts on the books or favorite quotes. It would be even more interesting when you reread a book years later and compare your thoughts from today and back then.
I deleted my goodreads and did an excel-esque spreadsheet in notion. Now I can annotate when I dnf books, if I re-read them, if they are physical copies or e-books. Never been happier