Yes! I join a few every year for the prompts like the 52 Book Club and Book Riot Read Harder (the 2024 list will be out on 1 Dec).

Instead of goodreads, join Storygraph. They have a section for just challenges including the two I mentioned above and you can even make some yourself. There are also more stats and you can add page goals.

Goodreads is linked to amazon so you’ll notice that they do focus on popularity rathen than personalised recommendation…because popularity sells books.

Personally, I enjoy storygraph for these reasons;

1. The charts motivates me to read more. I love seeing progress. My fav is the genre chart because it makes me want to explore other genres to “balance” it out.

2. The TBR planner is fun. You can plan 5 books in advance. The filter to sort by genre/mood etc is great for me as a mood reader.

3. The storygraph challenge section that you can join with others! This is unique vs other trackers. You can even see what others have added to get recommendation. I found a lot of great reads this way.

Unabridged classics. English is my 2nd language and we studied classic lit in school but they were abridged version. So between 12-16, I would get my hands on the unabridged books and other “classics” just so people go wow.

Most of them were boring or way over my understanding of the world. I read Handmaid’s Tale at 15yo(2002) and I had no idea what the hell was going on but hey I get to tell people I read Margaret Atwood eventhough NO ONE ASKED 🤣 I read it again at 30yo with more appreciation.

Unabridged classics. English is my 2nd language and we studied classic lit in school but they were abridged version. So between 12-16, I would get my hands on the unabridged books and other “classics” just so people go wow.

Most of them were boring or way over my understanding of the world. I read Handmaid’s Tale at 15yo(2002) and I had no idea what the hell was going on but hey I get to tell people I read Margaret Atwood eventhough NO ONE ASKED 🤣 I read it again at 30yo with more appreciation.

Goodreads is owned by Amazon and is obviously a marketing tool. They use rating and statistics on their database from both goodreads and the amazon site review(connected). With booktok exploding romantasy these past 2 years, I wasnt surprise it got it’s own category and what books are chosen in it. They’ll continue to nominate books that brings in the $$$

I’ve actually stopped reading reviews as i find them unrealiable these days and I dont do much research on the author. I rely mostly on the premise and the blurb. When I do have the time or if I’m unsure, I get the sample on kindle or google to read 10% of the book to see if I like the writing style.

You mean reading + audiobook together? Yeah, it’s called immersive reading and known to improve experience of reading. I do this sometimes too when I have both, especially when Im feeling down or just tired. It helps me focus on the reading and to really get into the story. Even better if it’s a full cast audio. I can’t do audiobook on it’s own because I have shit attention span but immersive reading works for me.