I’ve never use a book reading tracker before. But I made a few weeks ago a BookWyrme account.
BookWyrme is the fediverse book reading tracker and I’m marking books I’ve read when I remember them. Often, I need to add them to my instance as I’ve mainly read in French and many books needs to be manually added or imported before completing missing information.
This made made think about my journey as a reader. I’ve read lot older books in english or at least old enough to have more than one french translation. Would I love them with another translator or another translation? Would I enjoy reading them in english now? Would the langage difference be too much? Have a change too much as person?
I’ve read comics in paper format, volume by volume but I read them now online, chapter by chapter. How should I should I add them? Should I add both forms?
Which field are missing in BookWyrme to add information that are pertinent to me? What are its limitation? What are the workaround these limitations?
I looking for people to discuss these subjects.
Are you interested?
I don’t want to write such big post again and make giant conversations but to publish smaller post on semi-regular basis and hear a bit of feedback.
Is this the right place? Do you know a more fitting community?
(Late reply, but whatever.)
This is kind of why I never really used BookWyrm. I tried it out, realised I have to add like half of the books I’ve ever read (and many that I have read have shoddy or incomplete metadata), and left. Now I stick to writing down everything into an excel (actually LibreOffice) table. Any fields that I need, I can add at any point. Now, it is a bit more complicated to set up at first (deciding what data is relevant to you, entering it all into the table), but in the long run I find it a much better option than any online service.
I guess that’s an option. My strategy now is to add thd book when I read it. Seen I have the book in my hand, I have almost Every possible metadata about it. For book I’ve read a while ago, I add them when I think about it with just the name and the author. Sometime, I can find easily the ISBN and the cover so I add it as well but usually I don’t try to get much metadata. The collection will build itself over time.
True. It takes this sort of effort to build a good database with users’ input, and plenty of patience. And Bookwyrm does seem to deserve that effort, unlike… some of the competition.
I have a bookwyrm account, but I just found it too frustrating to use regularly and I need something with very little friction if I’m going to use it at all. My hope is it improves as it ages. I like the interface and general features of The Storygraph, but its private equity backing concerns me, my personal favorite though is Hardcover.app. It’s got a funding structure that is super close to being self sustaining and there are plans to open source as soon as they meet their expectations for the base app features and interface. I’m JaymesRS on all of them.
Honestly if it wasn’t because I love to explore the possibility of the fediverse, I wouldn’t be using it. The user experience is not great especially for someone who never use such a software and it won’t be good before many, many books are added. I take note of the softwares you mentionned. Thanks!
I made my account a while ago for the same reason. I realised that I am not much of an online book tracker, but I use bookwyrm to post my reviews if I write any. You dont’t have to use all features of bookwyrm to explore it is what I want to say.
I’m going the opposite way. I don’t care about the review publishing part.
I’m not sure what would be the ideal community, but [email protected] might have a larger audience with more perspectives :)
Hmm… I see your point. The audience is less book oriented but interested by the fediverse side of my story. Thank you.
Maybe you could post in [email protected] too? There are many subscribers but not much traffic.
Both are good communities but [email protected] is a bit higher traffic in my experience.
Thank you for the recommandations. I’ll consider it (_)
Often, I need to add them to my instance as I’ve mainly read in French and many books needs to be manually added or imported before completing missing information.
Yeah, that is one of the more prevalent problems with bookwyrm if you ask me. I mainly read in German, so I do the same. This is less an issue with English books, but I think it really depends on how popular they are in general and on bookwyrm. It helps, however, if you choose a boowyrm instance with many French people. If my current read is a German translation of an English original, then another possibility I consider is to select the English original, if adding the book manually is too much a hassle.
