A Month of Books :: Good Reads

Last updated on 27 February 2017

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Today I wanted to talk to you guys a bit about Good Reads. I introduced Good Reads to a friend the other day, who had only seen it or heard about it a few times, but didn’t really know what it was, or how to use it. I thought it might be a good opportunity to tell all of you wondering about it, what it is, what you can do, and how it can be one of the coolest things you’ll discover this month.

Good Reads, in a nutshell, is like an online bookshelf. It’s a place where you can keep a track of all the books you’ve read, the books you want to read, any books you’re currently reading, and then you can create other shelves for whatever you’d like. For example, I have a shelf called ‘Own It’. I have all the books that I own in the shelf, so I know what I’ve got.

Finding books is really easy on Good Reads. You can either search a book by the title, author or ISBN, or you can scan a book’s barcode in on your smart phone. That’s a really great feature actually. If I’m in a book store just browsing (something that happens rarely now, actually), and I find a book that sounds like I might like to read it, but perhaps don’t want to buy right then and there, I can scan it into Good Reads, and it will pop up and I can add it to my ‘to read’ shelf to come back to later.

As well as having a great cataloguing system like that, you can find other books that are similar to those you have been reading. If you were on the Hunger Games page, perhaps, similar books would pop up like the Divergent Series, the Delirium series, and many more dystopian novels. You can search for quotes, or add your own from books you’ve read; you can join groups (e.g. there’s a Blogger’s Bookshelf group) and post in those groups about the books you’re reading; you can also add friends, and get their reading updates; you can participate in the Good Reads Reading Challenge each year and challenge yourself to read x amount of books (I’m going to talk more about that later); and you can rate all your books and also write reviews so others can see what you thought.

It’s a really great site, and if you aren’t using it already, I highly recommend it. It’s 100% free, and it’s a great way to find more books, to look back and find the titles of books you may have read in the past, and to generally keep a track of things. I’ll see you over there!

Disclaimer: Good Reads did not ask me to write this. These are simply my own opinions about an incredible website.