Going back to Goodreads
Earlier this year I started the year of not tracking, where I decided I no longer wanted to track things in a performative manner. Before that I had already turned my back on Goodreads, moving to The Storygraph as a more palatable alternative. Now I find myself coming back to Goodreads.
Getting back to Goodreads
I was heavily inspired by Alice's Obsidian reading dashboard. A while back I created a vault meant to be a database of physical media I own - first with DVDs & BluRays, then I added books, and then I added video games. You can see the library here. I realized recently that the books portion of the "library" vault had actually become performative. I was displaying my current reads and keeping it updated, meanwhile my movies and video games section sit neglected. I haven't made changes yet but my plan is to get the books out of the library vault entirely, except for a list of recommended books (which are going to be my 5-star books, basically). I already copied some books over to my personal vault and will be changing up the properties to match a better workflow (and simplify them at the same time), so the next task is cleaning up the library - but that can wait.
Anyway, this is about going back to Goodreads. So. Alice also walked through how she tracks her reading in Obsidian, which include a really neat tie-in with Goodreads bookshelves. I encourage you to read both blog posts I linked to, I find them fascinating (but maybe that's just me!) but the short summary is that she leverages the Currently Reading RSS feed from Goodreads to create book notes in her library. With the plugin Booksidian you can do that with multiple shelves, and I'm doing that with my To Read shelf. Unless you turn on the "override note" option in Booksidian, the plugin creates one note for the book and the rest of the updates are manual.
How is this not performative?
I admit, it is performative in the sense that using Goodreads is inherently a performative act. I am commodifying my reading habits. To be fair, I would be doing this by returning to The Slow Reader - which I plan to in blog form first - so I suppose it was inevitable I would return to public book tracking.
The difference is that I am using this for personal purposes. I don't plan on sharing my Goodreads profile1 publicly and won't be adding reviews2 to the website. The sole purpose of using Goodreads here is to leverage the RSS feeds to create notes in Obsidian. If people discover my books independently, I can't control that.
One thing I won't be doing is continual updates to what page or percentage I'm at while reading. The lists are going to be To Read, Currently Reading, and Read.
Thoughts on not tracking after 8 months
This would be a good time to add some more thoughts to my year of not tracking. Going back to this form of tracking was thoughtful, and not out of a desire to show people "this is what I'm reading!" (except when I wanted to share something specific, such as Alec Guinness' commonplace book). There is one specific thing about tracking that I enjoy: discussions with likeminded people (even if it's para-social discussions - by that I mean "discussing" through leaving a review and reading friends' reviews).
I find Letterboxd the most helpful in that regard - there are fewer movies to choose from than books, and I think books are much more subjective material and higher chance of being interested in different genres and titles. My interests shift a ton. But I find there is more common ground with movies. I feel the same way with TV shows as with books - less common ground.
This year has been helpful to determine what I do and do not enjoy about tracking media consumption, so overall this was a good thing - even if I'm "going back" to public book tracking.