If you are a bookworm, you surely know about Goodreads, which is now in the hands of our beloved Jeff Bezos. For those who are not familiar with this platform, it's basically the largest website for readers/authors that provides several functions such as a book database and social networking. You can also keep track of books you read, follow people and see what they're reading, post your progress or review, comment on people's progress or review, browse recommendations, join book clubs or discussions or interact with certain authors.

The site is just massive, with more than 150 million users. Personally, I don't particularly like this platform, since its user interface looks like it has not been updated since 2000. It simply makes me feel disinclined to spend an unnecessary amount of time using it. I rather get the information and leave immediately so as to keep my sanity intact. Also, its reading tracking system is too simple for my liking. It's way more practical to make my own in my computer or in a physical reading journal. Despite my strong dislike of thiswebsite, I've been using Goodreads ever since I went back into reading in English, simply because of its convenience and practicality. Besides, everybody is using it. When in Rome, do as the Romans do.

Last year, when I was entering into my reading era, I learned about a few new similar platforms. The one that caught my attention was The Storygraph. It's receiving more and more attention after Amazon's takeover of Goodreads. Ok, Storygraph is far from perfect, but it has great potential. It's sleeker, simpler, and devoid of cluttering information, which I appreciate very much. Its recommendation algorithm seems pretty reliable too. Social networking is much more limited in comparison to Goodreads, but it has its appeal. Sometimes, social interactions among users can be daunting and toxic, so the limitation of social function can be a benefit for those who are tired of such issues. What I appreciate the most in Storygraph, however, is the ease and the flexibility of user-added books, which you can add in an instant. I can add whatever Japanese books that are usually not listed in foreign databases without any issue.

But, the most popular function of this platform is the reading statistics. It automatically gives you all sorts of statistics from the books you have registered. You can import your book list from Goodreads (which might take days to be processed) but you might need to manually adjust and type in some missing/inaccurate information if you want the statistics to be dependable. To be honest, some data seems a bit useless, but it does give me some fascinating data which I never considered tracking before. All the graphs look aesthetically pleasing, as you can see in the header image - a huge plus.

Let's see some of my data, just for the sake of it. Since I have only started tracking my reading in 2011, there's not much to look at yet, but you might find it interesting.

I guess this data is pretty much self-explanatory. Overall, 2023 was good. I'm reading more and more in English to the point where reading in English is no longer something I have to push myself to do. My reading in Spanish is pretty consistent, which I'm glad about. On the other hand, I failed to finish my two Portuguese books I'd been reading for months, which shows my declining motivation towards the language. It's not that I don't enjoy reading in Portuguese, rather, I used to pick up classics, which can be arduous to go through with my level of said language. However, I now have some shorter contemporary books in my possession, so I hope I can do better this year.

Also, I deliberately avoided big books last year. So, I mean to tackle at least a few of the those chunky books this year. In the book community, March comes with a so-called "March of Mammoth" theme, in which people challenge themselves to read a big book. So, I just might try reading one this month...well, let's see. Interestingly, I'm gravitating towards nonfiction nowadays. If the mood persists, I might find myself reading more nonfiction than usual this year.

Happy reading!

✔Corrected