Whether you are a paper or digital reader, Goodreads is one of the best applications for any reader who wants to have everything organized. You can view recommendations, track, rate books, add shelves, tags, and more.
Shelves
You can create different shelves on Goodreads depending on how you want to organize your books. For example, you can use the ones that come by default: Read, reading and I want to read. In the first one, all the books you have read since you downloaded the application will be registered and you can sort according to the criteria you want, which is especially useful: By title, by author, by average rating, by added date, by updated date, by End date, by your specific rating, by opinions, by number of pages, by original publication date. Thanks to this order you can have your library organized for years.
Reading
The “reading” shelf is also interesting in case you have left something in the middle and do not remember it. Goodereads will show which books you have started and Have you not finished.
I want to read
Finally, you have the “I want to read” shelf. This is especially interesting since we continually see recommendations, friends who tell us a book, we see them in television, in the bookstore, in large stores. But not always when they recommend it, you buy them at the moment. In “I want to read” we can record all those recommendations that we want to take into account in the future. Once you go to buy a book, you simply have to open this tab of the Android application to choose which one you want from all of them.
Beyond the shelves already available, you can create others. Of course, keep in mind that a book cannot be on two different shelves at the same time but you can have a borrowed bookcase, for example. Or books that you have read but do not have, that are from your partner, that you have bought but have not yet had time to read them … But always keeping in mind that it can only be in one and not in several at the same time.
Add a book
There are two ways to add a book: by searching for the title or author in the Godreads Android app, or by scanning it. This allows us to upload any book in just a few seconds.
- Tap on “More …”
- Choose “Scan Books”
- Snap the phone’s camera into the cover or code
- It will be scanned automatically
You can also use the magnifying glass in the “search” section through the title
Details of each book
For each book we will see a file that consists of the following data:
- Photography
- Name
- Author or author
- Average rating / Number of ratings / Number of reviews
- Buttons for you to include on your shelves
- Buttons for you to mark your own rating of this book
- Preview / Buy on Amazon / Other Stores
- Description of the book
- Valuation details
- Friends activity (if you have a friend who has read it, for example)
- Community Reviews
You can see if you like it or not, if it convinces you or not. If you have it, you can add it to your read list by tapping on the green button in the center of the screen. When you add it to your books, you can rate it, write a review (only if you want) and you can add tags to it. This will help us to easily find any book in the application if you have a wide reading activity. In addition, you can update the reading start and reading end dates if later you want to order your bookshelf according to the chronological order of the books read.
Reading challenge
Goodsreads also has a section where you can have a annual reading challenge. You can mark how many books you want to read each year and the titles will be recorded and annotated so that you can see the progress if you want to compare with your friends or with your family. It is unnecessary to set a minimum in many cases but it can be useful if your purpose is to read a book a month or a book a week, for example. You will keep track much better. In addition, from the application you can see the reading challenge of your friends.
Discover
Not only is it an app in which you can record your readings to keep track, but it also has all kinds of lists of recommendations, tips, highlights, news. You can filter by categories (romance, fiction, fantasy, non-fiction …) or consult the popular lists with thousands upon thousands of books to be based on average scores and opinions of other users. So you can discover what other people recommend and add them to your “I want to read” list to take them into account when you go to buy a new book.
Selected for you
In addition, from your profile you will find a recommendation of books selected for you. For this section to make sense and refine with your tastes, it is important that you rate the books you read and explain if you like them or not. When you have rated it, the recommendations are refined based on opinions of other users or similar books. To access this section you must touch on the three lines in the lower right corner and choose the “Selected for you” button. Here you will see the personalized recommendation list.
