Honestly none of the options were covering my needs so I rolled a custom google sheet. It's ugly, but it's hooked up to a books API so I can grab cover images and any info I deem relevant. Not as elegant as the apps, but it gives me flexibility, and since it's just a spreadsheet, importing from Goodreads and storygraph was easy.
this post was submitted on 06 Mar 2024
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That is so valid and I’ve been considering doing something similar. What books API do you use? I tried various ones for a project a little while ago and was a bit disappointed in the data quality.
I just used the Google books API. The data quality is not great for some titles, but it's a small annoyance for the flexibility gained.
I recently switched from Goodreads to Storygraph, and have ended up tracking my reading a lot more reliably since the change.
The various services I’m learning about in the comments here … it would be great if they federated their data at least. It could be much easier to get people to leave commercial offerings given that this is the main complaint I come across online.
Well now I'm wondering why I should track my reading. I just read, have my whole life. Some benefit I'm missing?
I track my reading with a bookmark
You don't have to. If you don't care about tracking this stuff, that's great, one less thing to worry about.
For my uses, I’ve found it beneficial to remember things I read looong ago, especially series that were partially written when I read them and now new books have come out. It’s also helped me watch the stats of what I read and how many times I’ve read something.
Often I’ll remember a snippet of a book, good or bad and wish that I had been tracking what I’ve been reading longer.
Calibre automatically updates Goodreads so that ends up being my backup.
I’m torn between The StoryGraph and Hardcover. Hardcover is the better app/site in my opinion, but it’s still quite young so the book database is rougher with a lot of duplicates or missing metadata. But it also has a public API so hopefully someone will write a Calibre Plugin and I can stop with Goodreads all together.
That said, I pay for both, and Hardcover even with missing data beats StoryGraph by 10%, imho.
I’m JaymesRS on all the places, and I’m always looking to follow others.
I use storygraph as well but haven't tried any of the social parts of the app. I mostly just like being able to keep track and see how many and what kind of books I'm reading. Bookwyrm is often recommended on mastodon.