Since first learning of Goodreads several years back, I've enjoyed periodically interacting with other readers - some known to me, others not - on that popular website. I've also enjoyed keeping track of books finished, posting reviews, and a few of the recommendations made to me by the site's algorithm. If you use Goodreads at all, what benefits have you derived? If you're a reader and never taken a look at the site, I recommend you do.
My one quibble with Goodreads are the simplistic statements that accompany the one-to-five star rating system used on the site. There have been occasions when I've published a review while purposefully skipping the ratings. For many books - non-fiction, in particular - declaring "I liked it" to go with a three star rating or "I really liked it" (four stars) strikes me as inadequate. I'd prefer letting the stars stand alone vs. being tied - however insignificantly - to an inane statement that risks trivializing an important book.
For example, Survival in Auschwitz: The Nazi Assault on Humanity (1947) is a book everyone should read but one only a masochist would "like". As my processing of Primo Levi's towering masterwork deepened and I prepared to mark the book as finished on Goodreads, the inadequacy of those accompanying statements - even the breathless one that goes with five stars ("It was amazing!") - felt intolerably trite.
Books like Survival in Auschwitz deserve no less than painstaking attention. Am I over-thinking these Goodreads statements as it applies to Levi's book? Perhaps. In this instance, I'll stand by over vs. under-thinking.
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