Why I Deleted Goodreads

I've been toying with the idea of deleting my Goodreads account for years, but I've finally done it. If you Google 'thinking of deleting Goodreads' you'll find that lots of people struggle with the clunky interface, the ownership by Amazon, the mining of the fairly intimate data about what you do and do not like to read, the new policy that deletes reviews that focus on scandal to do with the author, the fairly arbitrary star rating system that some feel devalues authors' work, or the annual reading challenge, which makes finishing books into a numbers game.

The clunky interface was, for me, the least of these issues. For some context, I've been on Goodreads for seven or eight years, minus a six-month break at the start of my first shopping ban. It was the only social media I kept using when I deactivated all others - I was only tracking my reading for my own interest, not really networking with others or promoting my 'brand', so I didn't see it as harmful. 

I stopped doing the reading challenges a couple of years ago, as I realised that it was becoming more about reading more and more than about savouring, pleasure, enjoyment, or knowledge. Just ploughing through one book after another. 

For similar reasons, during my shopping ban I deleted all the books I had saved on my 'to read' list, and stopped looking at my recommendations. Now, I know many people use Goodreads specifically for this feature, and certainly it was one of the things I enjoyed most about the site early on. But for someone trying to release themselves from the grip of buying too much, it wasn't helpful. 

There are always going to be new books out there that I want to read. But between lending with friends, charity shops, phone box libraries, the actual libraries, the independent bookshops I frequent, magazine reviews, authors and reviewers on blogs and on Instagram, publishers' websites, newsletters and catalogues - and, yeah, okay, Amazon, big chain bookshops and supermarkets as well, I don't think I will ever be short of ways to discover them. I found that relying on recommendations based on things I'd previously read - the Kindle store does this as well - can tend to create a kind of echo chamber, and I could fall down a rabbit hole of reading fifteen books about the same thing from the same perspective. Of not feeling 'done' if I hadn't read every single book about a topic, even when I felt I'd scream if I had to read about one more variation on - for example - circle casting, or the Wheel of the Year.

I also found that reviews from other readers could make or break a book for me before I'd even made the purchase. Reviews on Goodreads tend more towards the negative than those on Amazon (for some reason), and although I'm aware how subjective opinions are (I once gifted a copy of my favourite book to a friend, in what I believed was a fairly inspired move - she never could make it past the first chapter), it was fairly easy for a low star rating, or even a well-written negative review, to put me off even trying a book.

I did try to stop using Goodreads a few times over the years, because I was uncomfortable with the way it seemed to be taking over my reading behaviour. I'll put my hands up and say this is probably more a me problem than a Goodreads problem, as there are echoes of it in my previous obsessions with blogging and with Instagram (apparently I really, really like documenting myself for an audience). I noticed that I was sometimes choosing my books to make sure I seemed well-read on a certain topic, in case someone (who?!) checked my Goodreads to make sure I was qualified to hold an opinion. (In fairness, when I was a goth blogger, someone did once trawl and screenshot my last.fm to prove that my music taste wasn't goth enough. Too much Black Eyed Peas and not enough Bauhaus. It's a fair cop, guv.)

Even without the reading challenges, even without marking my 'current reads' to avoid a numbered total at the end of the year, I was still racing through books. Partly to defeat my TBR pile, which shrinks and grows and shrinks again but never completely goes away - which I want it to do for a little while so I can re-read some older books, slowly and in a leisurely manner, without guiltily side-eyeing the teetering stack at the side of the bed - but also partly to hit that arbitrary and subjective star rating (which for me ranged from 1 - hated it through to 5 - loved it beyond measure). 

The biggest factor for me in the end, though, was feeling as though someone was reading over my shoulder all the time. Although my friends on Goodreads were predominantly my real-life friends, I imagined that the sceptics were rolling their eyes at yet another spirituality book; the cool punk people laughing behind their hands if I picked up a Jenny Colgan. The star rating began to feel like an author popularity contest and I worried about hurting someone's feelings. The irony is that when I tried to take breaks from Goodreads, one of the things that kept pulling me back was if I read something that I knew one of my friends on the app would enjoy!

Deleting my account took all of three taps. Goodreads is built into my tablet, so I'd found it pretty impossible to just not go on there (which is how I ended up back on the app after that six-month break). Amazon punished me for those three taps by immediately deregistering my tablet, losing all my bookmarks, which was unhelpful but didn't diminish how liberated I suddenly felt. Interestingly, the TBR pile suddenly lost its grip on me. 

I think this was the right decision for me, possibly one I should have made a long time ago, but postponed because I didn't want to lose the big list of books I'd read. Will I forget some books? Almost definitely. Will it matter? Almost certainly not. And now I feel like I can do what I should have been doing all along - reading whatever I want.