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Show HN: A more social, Amazon-free alternative to Goodreads
71–80 of 197 posts
Re: Show HN: A more social, Amazon-free alternative to Goodreads
#72Meh. Reading is a personal experience. I guess I understand the desire to make it more social -- but I'm not sure why I would go to the lengths to do so. Is it some kind of gamification thing? I guess that's why I never got into Goodreads either. I might be an outlier -- but I've never seen reading -- authentic, personal reading -- as anything other than personal. I'm a social creature for sure, but I don't feel the…
I agree, reading by nature is very personal. Have you tried reading when you're surrounded by a group of friends talking? Yeah, hard to do. Doesn't really work.
But, where I've found the "social" element being important is more in helping me to determine what to read next (like a friend recommending a book to me), discussing books with others or sharing something interesting about what I'm reading, seeing what my friend's of family's all-time favorites are, etc.
The interaction comes in-between reading sessions and has greatly enhanced my enjoyment of books.
Re: Show HN: A more social, Amazon-free alternative to Goodreads
#73I'm not too into the social activities when it comes to the media I consume, but I do use https://rate.house/ to keep track of everything.
Re: Show HN: A more social, Amazon-free alternative to Goodreads
#74I once was part of a now-defunct reading forum in my teens. On the forum, people would package three related books into quests. A boring example would be a dystopian quest pack with three books about three very different dystopian scenarios. But the quests people put together were usually more interesting. I remember a "Weird Magic" quest had books with really unconventional magic systems. I found Motherless Brooklyn…
Oh this is so neat!! Thanks for the idea Anyone want this? Can have it up in March
Lmk if you want contributors, I was looking at building something like this as well.
Re: Show HN: A more social, Amazon-free alternative to Goodreads
#75Very interesting... some feedback. So I search for "Proust", and the top 8 results are not Proust. Since Proust has one extremely famous book, I thought it would show up, rather than a bunch of different commentary on Proust. So I finally find the page for In Search Of Lost Time. However, it says none of my friends have read it. Well, of course not - I don't have any Booqsi friends yet. So, there's just nothing I can…
Thanks for the feedback! The book's info page doesn't have a lot going on, except to see some info about the book (or add it to a shelf, or recommend it to a friend) and see if any of your friends have read it.
Your comments about Goodreads and the average random person's opinion is spot on and one of the inspirations for wanting to build something new. I noticed that its my actual friends and family -- not necessarily a random person -- that have the biggest impact on what I read next. A book rec from a friend you respect goes a long way. Booqsi is attempting to harness some of that.
Re: Show HN: A more social, Amazon-free alternative to Goodreads
#76For less social readers, I find openlibrary good for tracking books I want to read.
They have a lot of data, some a bit messy but the depth and breadth is insane. They link to scans of crazy old books, ebooks of the classics, are happy to link out to libraries etc. have lots of weird and wonderful old textbooks and have open APIs and silly amounts of open data for book geeks.
Re: Show HN: A more social, Amazon-free alternative to Goodreads
#77I use BookWyrm [0], which is not only social but decentralized (ActivityPub) and thus interoperable with other social networks like Mastodon. It's nothing fancy, it just works and it is nice to be able to follow (or share) quotes or reviews on books within the Fediverse.
Re: Show HN: A more social, Amazon-free alternative to Goodreads
#78> if you've been on Goodreads before, you'll probably agree that it's not all that social, and overall not all that exciting.
Sorry, not sold.
Re: Show HN: A more social, Amazon-free alternative to Goodreads
#79I once was part of a now-defunct reading forum in my teens. On the forum, people would package three related books into quests. A boring example would be a dystopian quest pack with three books about three very different dystopian scenarios. But the quests people put together were usually more interesting. I remember a "Weird Magic" quest had books with really unconventional magic systems. I found Motherless Brooklyn…
Oh this is so neat!! Thanks for the idea Anyone want this? Can have it up in March
Yes
Re: Show HN: A more social, Amazon-free alternative to Goodreads
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
signed up and the rating system is borrowed wholesale from google books and there are no reviews at all; so rating and reviews are not even a feature (yet?). not a good look, i'd love an alternative to goodreads but not even having a basic rating system is kinda defeats whatever purpose this site might be going for
The goal isn't to be another reviews or ratings site; that's been done before. The goal is to leverage the power of your personal book community to help you better decide what to read next. Drop book recommendations to each other, post about books to your feed and engage in discussion, see what your friend's favorites are by viewing their top 10 favorites shelf, etc.
But that is not an alternative to Goodreads' public view. It's only a copy of Goodread's social system.
Why are you more trustworthy than Amazon with my book reading habits?
NOTE: Your IP address for booqsi.com appears to be run on ... AWS ... seems ironic or shady, can't tell which.