Now, GoodReads (GR) has been a great site for cataloging what books I've read, am reading, or want to read. I've created shelves for genres, lists for my challenges, and even gathered books I was forced to read in school. It has a huge listing of editions, summaries, and reviews. And if you hadn't noticed, I link to it all the time in my reviews, sidebars, and even have the app linked to my Facebook page!
But there is one thing that I wish they had...
A Re-Read Option
Has anyone else noticed that missing feature?
I tend to re-read books a lot. When the latest sequel comes out I like to re-read the entire series. Or perhaps it's for a reading challenge or book club. And heaven forbid reminiscing over an old favorite.
As it stands now, I can see a few different options to handle my re-reading.
Option 1: Don't count re-reads at all. Makes things a lot simpler, right? Unfortunately, this counts against my GR-sponsored reading challenge, as the "Date Finished" must contain the current year. I suppose I could say, 'computer be damned,' and make my own counter but...where's the validation in that?
Option 2: Change reading dates to current/last time read. I then add a personal note that tells me the last time I read it. Unfortunately, changing the dates read not only removes the book from my GR timeline, but also my Facebook one. It also gets complicated when I try to remember when I first read a book after I've re-read it a few times.
Option 3: Read/Review multiple editions of a single book. Unfortunately, that option hinders more than it helps. Firstly, it adds a copy to my overall books list, which is silly if anyone else looks through and finds 15 copies of the same book. Secondly, it clutters shelves if I label them with genre/theme/etc.. And lastly, it's confusing when I actually have read multiple editions (print & audiobook versions) of one book.
Obviously, I'm not a coding expert, so I can't say it'd be an easy thing to change. But here's the review form as it stands now. As you can see, under the main review space, there's "Date Finished" and "Date Started" followed by "Number of Times Read".
Now, here's the second part of the review form. As soon as you click the "I Own A Copy" box, a new section opens up, letting you fill in more information.
Why couldn't they add a "I've Read This More Than Once" bump-out?
I know I'm not completely alone in this, as there is a Suggestion Topic on GR specifically addressing the re-reading issue. Feel free to add your own two cents on the topic there, too.
But before you go off and do that, what do you think? How do you handle re-reading books? Is GoodReads the premiere book cataloging site, or do you use something different? Let me hear you howl!
I've asked them about it before and didn't get anything near a good enough answer, I read a book last year that I read again this year and had to change the date so it counts to this years goal but now it isn't counted towards last years, it's so annoying! They know we're book lovers who re-read so it really makes sense for them to add an option for you to have more than one 'date read'
ReplyDeleteYeah, I didn't read all of the entries/responses, but the couple I did read that looked 'official' were basically, "We've considered it but it's not a high priority." ...What is a high priority? The site seems to work just fine, nothing's falling apart, so why not address this issue that is common for book readers? Ugh.
DeleteI have run into the exact same thing! Usually I just change the date, but that gets frustrating too, for the same reasons you've listed. There are enough little things that make me frustrated about them that I'm considering looking elsewhere to keep track of my reading. Maybe we should have a book blogger run website to keep track, since we'll know what we need more than anyone else, you know?
ReplyDeleteYeah, I've looked at a couple other options, but they didn't offer even as much as GR does. And the Living Social one (which I used to use on Facebook) went belly up a while back, so that I know of there's just Shelfari (by Amazon) as a semi-competitor. My biggest issue there is the lack of sorting or shelving - you can't have separate collections to display, and what you do have you can't reorganize.
DeleteA book-blogger run site would be great, I just don't know if it's feasible to take on GR. I haven't run into any huge problems so far, barring the re-reading fail, so I'm not as inclined to change. Now, if there were people who knew coding and wanted to create a new book-related site but needed readers' inputs, I'd be there in a heartbeat. For the time being, I'm stuck.
Now this is a feature that I'm sure many readers can get behind. There are any number of books that I've read multiple times, but there's no actual means of saying that I re-read "insert title" in "insert year" on Goodreads. In fact, I just recently re-read a favorite trilogy and can't say that I've read it this year because I've already read it both in 2010 and 2011. I really do wish Goodreads had a feature like that so we could include books we've re-read in the current year. It would be nice to have a more accurate count of how many books I've read even if some of them are re-reads.
ReplyDeleteYeah, this really annoys me. Shelfari does the yearly reading challenge goals, too. And that site allows me to show multiple dates AND it counts toward my current reading goal. Obviously, if Shelfari is able to have the feature, it is possible. Goodreads needs to fix this. I just re-read a book that I read in 1994. I don't want to change that date to 2012. I was only 13 years old in 1994. One of the first books of that kind that I read.
ReplyDelete