Actually, Goodreads Is Good

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Goodreads, the largest book-centric social network, is a merciless hellscape overrun by petty, perpetually aggrieved readers. The “one-star Goodreads review,” now a staple of internet culture, circulates on Bookstagram, BookTok, and BookTube in its most absurd forms—from multi-paragraph takedowns of beloved classics to brutal little zingers. (“Never reading a book written by a man ever again,” reads one for The Virgin Suicides.) Lauren Oyler devotes a chapter of her 2024 book No Judgment to Goodreads, generalizing about its legions of “amateur reviewers.” Even Slate’s own Scaachi Koul, in my favorite essay from Sucker Punch, describes Goodreads as a “democratized book review website steadily destroyed by people who can’t fucking read.”