Over the past few weeks on Twitter, I have seen so many posts on two new websites that people are suggesting as an alternative to Goodreads: The Story Graph and the Book Sloth. As someone who loves many features of Goodreads, such as how my Kindle will automatically update that I am reading a book and the community threads, there are other features that are in desperate needs of an update. For example, all of my books recommendations are either inaccurate and do not feature recently released books.
However, I am always willing to try something new, so of course, I immediately created accounts on both The StoryGraph and Book Sloth. It is important to know that these new websites and apps are either in the beta stages or the beginning phases of their launches. As a result, there are many features promised to be developed later on into the future compared to Goodreads which has more permanent fixtures. As a result, when I discuss both the StoryGraph in this post and Book Sloth in a later post, I am going to focus on what I enjoy now and what I hope to see in the future.
What I Like Right Now
One of the most attractive aspects of The StoryGraph for me was the recommendations feature and the graphs that described my personal reading tastes. Upon signing up for this website, each user takes a survey about the books they like to read. You can also import your Goodreads library, which also gives the site an idea of books that you like to read. This also helps you to establish your presence on the site with books you’ve already read. For me, the only hiccup with this feature was in the reads for the year: it duplicated some of the books so it looks like I’ve read more books this year. With the site still in the beginning phases, I could not figure out how to stop the duplication. However, this wasn’t extremely frustrating to me as I know this website is only in the beta phase.
How accurate are the recommendations/reading statistics?
The Ordered for You Page
While I’ve seen many users have success with the Ordered for You page, for me, this feature was hit-or-miss. While there are some books that I saw by authors I have read in the past or books that I heard of that I was possibly interested in, there were quite a few that I thought missed the mark on my tastes. The creator of this site explained that they are still uploading books into their library, so it is possible that as time goes on or if I can just adjust my filters when searching on the ordered for you page.
The Reading Statistics
On the other hand, I was extremely impressed with my reading statistics as I feel it perfectly described by reading tastes. The StoryGraph described my ideal book as a fiction book that is light-hearted, emotional, and funny as well as fast-paced and under 300 pages… which is exactly what I like to read!
The StoryGraph, as its name suggests, provides even more detailed graphs about books you read in terms of mood, pacing, page number, and fiction vs. nonfiction. I know a lot of people in the past have created different tables and and graphs on their own because this is a feature that Goodreads lacks, so I think many book bloggers will be pleased with this feature on the website.
What I Would Like To See In the Future
Easier to Navigate and More Complex Community Features
Currently, there is only a community tab on The StoryGraph. You can see the activity of everyone on the site, or choose just to look at people you follow. Compared to Goodreads, this is a very basic community feature that doesn’t allow much interaction between users. In the future, I hope that The StoryGraph can make the community aspect of this site a little more uder-friendly and extensive.
Easier To Edit Books Read
Like I mentioned a few times in my post, I have had a difficult time navigating and changing books that are added or duplicated. For example, sometimes when I click on my number of books read in a year, it won’t let me see a list of the books that I read in a year. As the website becomes more established, I hope that some more of these little details are worked out to make it easier to edit and change books that I have read.
Overall Thoughts
The StoryGraph promises some interesting features that current book websites lack. That being said, this website is still in the Beta stages, so there are some little details that need to be worked out in order to make the site easier to navigate.
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Beauty and the Bean Boots 
I totally agree with you regarding Goodreads recommendations. I just stopped looking at them. I will check out Story Graph. Thanks for the review!
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Very interesting! I have seen Story Graph around, but hadn’t talked to anyone who had tried it. I might just have to after this!
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