It is, in fact, possible to have a decent time on Goodreads. You just have to ignore everything about the way the site is designed and how you’re supposed to use it. When I first signed up in early 2012, I obeyed all the prompts. I populated my “to-read” shelf with the platform’s recommendations. I followed the pages of my favourite writers, as if Nabokov and Kafka were going to start posting updates. I papered my profile with quotes by Sigmund Freud and Philip Roth and deadpanned that my favourite books were simply “the big ones.” I didn’t mind all the beige, the slowness of the search feature, the sense that, if I turned around too quickly, I might catch the platform taking a nap. The site catered to my undergraduate hunger for pretension, my need to perform my taste—a flame it continues to fan very capably in its users.
Gradually, things started to go off the rails. My to-read list ballooned alarmingly, not from titles I felt drawn to out of genuine desire but ones the algorithm pushed on me. The thrill of discovery, too, felt compromised: every time my feed told me a friend had added a book that I’d found first, I felt a frisson of annoyance. Have some imagination. Then, after I posted a review of a recently published novel, the author reached out to thank me for it. I froze. The review had been positive, but that wasn’t the point—I thought this was a private party, not the town square. There were writers here? Just hanging around and watching us? The pressure to moderate my ratings for an invisible audience was immediate. It was one thing to show off for my friends; this felt like a reminder that the stakes were people’s livelihoods. It was my first hint that Goodreads wasn’t—or wasn’t only—a place for readers to gather and connect. It was trying to cater to authors and publishers too—groups whose priorities are very different.
