Catching up on Classics (and lots more!) discussion

How did you first learn of Goodreads? Why did you join?

My story is that I was teaching in the public schools. Early in my career I attended a training session where we were encouraged to keep a "Reading Journal" in a standard composition book. The idea was to keep of list of books we read and rate them with a few notes. This would become a resource for future lesson plans as well as recommendations to students on books to read.

In 2016 my daughter-in-law was at my house for the Christmas holiday. She saw me write in my journal and suggested that I try Goodreads. Without her I doubt I would have heard about the website. I became a Librarian so that I could catalog my personal books. I uploaded pictures and started may new book pages. By 2018 I discovered the fun of joining groups and have been here since.

It has really enriched my life.

I had kept a handwritten journal for years, writing down the books I read and a little about them, quick impressions, how much I liked them and why, so that I could stir my memory. At some point, I started keeping an Excel spreadsheet on them. I have no idea if someone told me about GR or I just stumbled upon it, but I know I joined in 2011 and entered the books from my journals and any others I could remember. It seemed a wonderful thing to me to be able to keep a record so conveniently. I had no intention of joining groups.

A lovely woman, who has since left the site, commented on my reviews and wondered if I would like to read with her. She invited me to a group she was in and we did buddy reads there. Like any addiction, it went from one thing to another, and soon a day without GR felt like a day without coffee. I still miss my original reading partner...some of the best shared reads I have ever had.

I don’t recall how I found Goodreads, but I would guess that I read about it. That was at the start of 2018. I was searching for ways to motivate more reading and to find good books to read. I’m not sure when I joined this group but it was pretty early on. So glad I did!

I know the date I joined because I remember the first book I read with the group was All Quiet on the Western Front and the next was The Remains of the Day. What a wonderful way to start off!

I think it was through Internet searches - looking for book title + "review" (more than once) GR reviews popped up in the search results, and at last I became interested and had a closer look at what it was.

For a while, I filled my bookshelf, but I discovered that it pushed me toward quantity and a competitive spirit - which I both find disgusting when it comes to reading. By now, my main activity are group reads & discussions, plus writing reviews (most of which are personal notes and remain un-posted)

I knew about GR from looking up reviews of books for some time before I joined. My earliest Date Added book is 2009, but I think I joined earlier and didn't actually use it for several years. Personal issues were overwhelming for a while and I became the full-time caregiver for my brain damaged husband in 2006, so reading time was non-existent for a while.

Years later, after he died and my children got married, I realized I didn't have anyone to talk to about the books I read. I remember thinking it was like I closed a book and it fell into a black hole because I never got to comment on it. So I slowly started putting my thoughts into reviews here. Joining challenges took even longer, but I like feeling that I'm "doing something" with the books I read, even if it's just putting the title on a list somewhere.

This is my second year with this group and it has rapidly become a favorite of mine. I know people who read, but no one who reads the variety of books I do, so the conversations here are really valuable to me, and I find great new books and authors from the mentions here.

I am not sure how I learned of Goodreads - maybe from my friends who are big readers. I joined in 2010 to keep track of what books I read. I had kept "Notecards" of what I read on a computer but a crash lost all of the cards :(

I was always into writing book reviews and reviews in general, so when I searched, this site always came up. I thought it looked like something right up my alley, so I joined.

I originally started online reading on Shelfari, and met many of the people I know here on that site -- but it went out of business! So, several of us started looking around for other places to read and discuss, and this was one of the choices -- also it was the largest one with the most choices of reading groups! Some thought it was too big and didn't want to join, but I think most did. It took me a little while to get used to the new format (different than the one I was used to!), but when I joined "Catching Up on Classics" I found my reading "home"!! Everyone was (is!) so friendly and easy to talk to -- and likes to read and plan and share books like I do! I love it here and don't plan to ever leave! :)

If I remember correctly, a friend of mine was keeping a bookshelf on other social media. It wasn't Goodreads but one of the competitors at the time. But that caught my interest, and I did an internet search. The first group I joined (now defunct) was "Short Sweet Treats" with shorter classics.

Anyway, from the very beginning I knew I was among my tribe. People were mentioning books that I loved that no one in my offline life had ever heard of before. I'm so glad I found it!

I Googled website books. My joining GR happened at the same time I got my first e-reader, a kindle keyboard.

The bookshops in my country are very limited.

I was glad to get a device that opened a whole dimension for me.

The first book I read on my kindle was the first Inspector Rutledge mystery.

My younger daughter used Goodreads just to make a list of the books she was reading, and she told me about the site so I could also make up a list in 2011. Then I discovered all the great groups on GR with their wonderful discussions. I've always been an avid reader, and it has been such a pleasure to interact with so many people that also have a love of reading.

I joined in 2011. I wanted to read “the classics” – whatever that was – and was looking for a list of classics. I found Goodreads and the 1001-books group.

In June 2017 this group would read Othello. At that time I understood that the 1001-list had some flaws. The biggest one it that it is novels (almost) only. No plays, no poems. It is also way too English-centric.

The discussion here is super helpful in deeper understanding, and I also get to read a broader range that I would normally do.

google search result from an unrelated query.

completely new to me, I guess still getting to grips with how it works - I haven't always been a book reader so it's been quite a journay and a learning curve

Luffy Sempai wrote: "I Googled website books. My joining GR happened at the same time I got my first e-reader, a kindle keyboard.

The bookshops in my country are very limited.

I was glad to get a device that opened ..."


I have had the same experience with Kindle and Gutenberg pdfs. It's such a blessing to have access to a wide variety of titles.

I had this worried thought about 7 years back that I might not remember all the books I read so I wanted to track all the titles I'd read since adulthood. I loved the reading challenges and set 80 books one year.

But like Heathcliff from WH, I was misanthropic and didn't post reviews or post on boards. It was mainly to track my reading stats.
And I made a rule to only read books that were rated above 4 stars on GR (sans classics or esoteric finds)

Does anyone else have criteria for books when deciding what's next?

I started a mission to read Classics back in 2015
things quickly snowballed after I found the Guardian 1000 list,
and I read about 70 books that year
I was tracking them in a spreadsheet (and still do in parallel!)
when I mentioned my new reading habit to one of my friends (I'm pretty sure it must've been Helen - Thanks Helen!) they told me about Goodreads, which I checked out, liked the look of, and signed up for in January 2016
and the rest is history ;o)

Mira wrote: "I had this worried thought about 7 years back that I might not remember all the books I read so I wanted to track all the titles I'd read since adulthood. I loved the reading challenges and set 80 ..."

I have let monthly Group Reads and Challenges guide me a good bit. Personally, I usually have some idea I am interested in pursuing. Those ideas tend to change every so often. I will express my idea in grandiose terms as an attempt at humor. My current idea is that I simply want to understand the entire history of mankind with archeological, genetic, and linguistic information to fill out a timeline. LOL That's all. ...Ok seriously I have been interested in archeology and how it informs ancient history. Also the movements of ancient human migrations and how those migrations laid the foundation for current civilization is fascinating. In a year or more I might exhaust this interest and move on.

I actually learned through getting my first Kindle back in 2014. I also needed a way to keep track of all the books, and didn't pay much attention to Goodreads until I really started to do some digging and realized how robust it was! If it wasn't for my Kindle purchase, I probably wouldn't have found out about Goodreads years later! Thanks, Kindle!

I've known about Goodreads for a long time. I am unfortunately a procrastinator so instead of signing up and plugging in all 330+ books I wanted to keep track of, I just took pictures. I will not be doing that again!

I am also working on a digital archive, so I am once again seeking more books to explore.