This past year was the year to really try out some new reading websites. Goodreads is the OG tracker for me. I started using it in 2010. Amazon purchased it several years ago and at the time it was disappointing news but I didn’t really make any moves as there wasn’t any other web based reading tracker that was as useful at the time. And yet, over time the site more or less stagnated. Somehow it still has value for referring to book reviews but other than that it’s a pain to use on mobile devices.
In 2020 when people had more concentration at home time, a few new sites popped up claiming to be the next alternative to Goodreads. Several of the options I signed up for go heavy on stats. But both Hardcover and Storygraph are only as good as their book matching. Even Goodreads wasn’t perfect still does have the best reference library to different publication formats. So as Hardcover and Storygraph try to lean heavy into things like format delineation, sometimes I just have to default to whatever is available.
Hardcover was the first one I came across that seemed legit. Looking at it now compared to when I signed up has updated a lot more features and community. Last year they did a 2024 Year in Books and I look forward to what they put out for 2025. I think the data will get better over time as more people use the service.
I also signed up for StoryGraph when it started getting attention. This one has more of a LLM backend and a focus on stats. I’m not so impressed with the LLM generated reviews as it is more of a morbid curiosity. They generate a synopsis based on user reviews and then they try to make a user custom review on whether or not you, based on your history, would like the book.
Funnily, I recently started reading some non-fiction books and the generated synopsis made it sound like I wouldn’t like it. Even for normal book reviews, I don’t let reviews sway my decisions unless I already had an inkling something was going to be bad. In this case, was a bit disappointed that the LLM generated synopsis took my history and suggested that I wouldn’t like this type of book, which I think for others who take that kind of feedback seriously, would stop people from exploring something new.
LibraryThing is cute in that older web style with updated features. It has way more support in metadata from an open source Dewey Decimal system. I really like using this more for library and cataloguing. I will most likely spend more time cleaning up my database here. They also provide some stats and in this case for my year in review for 2025, it’s my whole library of things because I joined this year.
The last website I found a few weeks ago was Pagebound. This site is also on the cute side from a modern web design. And they use emojis as part of the rating system. Their 2025 wrap up is a bit more basic. It’s still fairly new and not as robust, but I think that’s why I like it.
Now that it’s 2026, I think I need to make a decision on which services I’d like to keep up. Honestly, leaning into LibraryThing for keeping track of the books I own. The rest are seriously a toss up. I was favoring Storygraph as it seems the most similar to Goodreads down to the free book raffles. Then at the end of the year, Hardcover really updated their UI. Pagebound is so cute and simple. Ugh. But then do I give up and keep Goodreads because my friends are still on there?