Library sites

By Paul library

We all know them. Library sites, like Goodreads, where we can keep track of what we're reading, what we've read, what we thought of the book, and stalk - I mean follow other people and what they read.

Most people only know Goodreads, it seems.

   
Library thing logo

Did you know there is a Fediverse version called Bookwyrm? Bookwyrm is nice, part of a large group of systems.

And have you ever heard of another, very old and independent site called LibraryThing? The logo says '20 years', but that is last year's news. It started in 2005.

I don't remember exactly when I joined LibraryThing. It was way before Goodreads, that's for sure. Looking at the reviews of friends there, apparently it was 2012. If only for fun, go there and have a look. It's interface hasn't changed very much since then, and I can't help but like it. It's simple and clean. No bloat like so many places.

Where Goodreads is Amazon bought and owned, Bookwyrm and LibraryThing are not related to any place that wants to sell you stuff and tries to push you into a specific store.

I'm not saying that Goodreads is bad. Not at all. The more people there, the better, because that means people are reading (or listening to audio-) books. It's horrible to read (no pun intended) about how rapidly the reading capabilities of (especially young) people are declining, not in the least because of short text messaging on smartphones, and very likely also the use of ai *) systems.

There are probably many more library sites out there in the web wide world, but I know these three. They're good places to find good reviews.

*) No typo. I don't give ai the honour of capitals as that makes it more important than I think it is.