A book is a somewhat large time investment. Often it is worth it but often it isn't. The main problem is the sheer amount of books out there. Deciding what to read next is a non-trivial decision problem. Currently I'm basing my decisions on ratings, recommendations from friends and book clubs. It would be nice if sites like Goodreads kept statistics on ratings for second/third/... reading (maybe they do?). Such infor…
Whatever the intent of Goodreads initially, once Amazon bought it, it became a subtle funnel to drive sales of books, ideally through Amazon. While there are options there for libraries and many other booksellers, no one should believe for a minute that Bezos is interested in helping Goodreads be a contemplative site that fosters multiple readings of a small number of deeper reads. The reviews can be helpful, but “tr…
Since then, I've mainly just categorized books I've read on goodreads, which is nice if I want to see what I've read over the past few years and go back to some of them. Especially when my memory is quite bad. Often I'll rank them, though on a personal scale where 3 is 'enjoyed'. I might stop doing that soon, and just switch to an analog version my grandmother does -- write the book and authors in a notebook and keep for years. I've already starte doing this somewhat: I use an index card as a bookmark and write the book and completion date for whichever books I use it with.