adventures of a typical high school student

Hello everyone!

If you’re an avid reader, you’ve most likely stumbled across the Goodreads website at some point in your life. I was no exception, but I didn’t use it myself; I would only peruse the website if I wanted to read reviews on a specific book or find a recommendation. However, about a month and a half ago, I made a Goodreads account and started actually keeping track of the books I was reading and rating them. I also have been steadily building a giant “want to read” list of books I’ll have to check out at my library once it’s back open. If you want to find out how it’s changed my reading habits, keep on reading.

I’m kind of an organization-freak when it comes to lists and keeping track of things I’ve done/want to do/need to do, so I’m not sure why I just came around to using Goodreads. I love the idea of being able to look back on everything I’ve read and remind myself whether I liked certain books or not, and being on the website in general motivates me to read more.

It has a feature where you can set your goal of how many books you want to read in 2020, and I found this to be motivating as well. I personally chose 20 books. I’ve already met that goal and read over that amount, so I’ll probably change that limit soon.

I’m more motivated to read because I know that I’ll get to check off that I finished a book on my Goodreads. This is probably a questionable mindset, but since I love reading and this motivates me to make time for it, I’m okay with that. 🙂 I’m just that type of person, so Goodreads has been helpful for me in that regard.

It’s also useful in case you’re looking for new books to read! They suggest book recommendations off of the categories you choose or the books you’ve read, and of course you can read the reviews to get a taste of whether you’d actually like them or not.

If you already have an ongoing list of books you’d like to read, it definitely makes it easier to keep track of them. I’ll get recommendations from friends or hear about different books in passing that I’d like to read, but I’ll easily forget about them if I don’t write them down somewhere. Even if I do manage to write them down, I rarely end up following through with reading the book and I usually end up losing the note to myself. Not anymore!

My “Want to Read” list is at least 70 books at the moment, so I definitely have a lot to go through. I’m proud to say that during quarantine I’ve reread almost every single book on my bookshelf and rated it on Goodreads for future reference. I can’t stress enough how helpful the five-star rating system and shelves are for an organized yet forgetful person like me.

Quarantine is also a huge part of this equation. I wouldn’t have had time to play with Goodreads or read so many books in the past couple months in general if it wasn’t for being stuck in my house. That’s one of the few upsides of this situation, and one that I plan on continuing taking advantage of.

This probably sounded like a weird ad for Goodreads- I know it’s been around forever and so it’s not exactly groundbreaking news, but using it is a new habit of mine and I wanted to share how it’s impacted my reading. I hope you still enjoyed it and are inspired to go check out the website if you’re like me and haven’t before. Stay safe and healthy.

Brooke