Hello, fellow bibliophiles!
I’ve been on the hunt for a decent Goodreads alternative for a few years now and was curious as to what the fine folks of the Lemmyverse thought of Bookwyrm.
There are so many GR alternatives that are clearly trying to be “The New Goodreads”, though the whole reason I wanted an alternative is because I’m sick of GR and its devolution into a commercialized, biased, and messy shithole. Like, if I wanted recommendations and feckless reviews straight from the putrid inner bowels of Tiktok, I’d go to Tiktok. And most of these alternatives seem to quickly turn into the same thing. I refuse to believe that GR and its copycats are our only viable option.
Bookwyrm seems promising. It’s been a bit clunky and I’m still figuring it out, but I’m enjoying the utter lack of sponsored or “pushed” content. So, thoughts? Opinions? Suggestions?
Another interesting platform in development is Hardcover. The devs have said they’re open to integrating with the fediverse in the future.
Literal.club is probably my favourite. Cleanest interface of anything I’ve tried, and a really great API to use if you’re a developer. It also recommends profiles with a similar taste to yours, which can be helpful for discovering new books.
Edit: I looked into Bookwyrm and it turns out you can get book lists (e.g. currently reading) as JSON. For example, bookwyrm.social/user/mouse/books/reading.json. For anyone who wants an API, this might be enough.
It’s closed source, though.
BW is super nice but it really needs more development, it’s clear it needs some database thingy improvement, but well, given how little known it is, it’s understandable.
