Does GoodReads affect our reading habits?

GoodReads. Most of us book addicts are on there. We update what our current reads are and we rate books we have read. We keep track of our yearly reading goal and enter giveaways and like quotes. I love it – but sometimes I feel that it doesn’t do some books a favour.

There are so many rates and reviews on so many books that our opinions and judgements can become clouded when we want to read a specific book. Or is that just me? I find that if I pick up a book in a bookshop, that I personally find interesting and want to read, then I get back home with said book and look at its ratings and reviews, which may change my opinion on the book before I have even read it. If it has mainly bad reviews then I can get put off a book before I have even read it; if it has mainly good reviews then I will want to read it more.

Seeing as my opinion on books can go against the majority a lot of the time (as some of you may know I find many books to be overrated), this doesn’t always bode well for me. Sometimes a lot of people hate a book that I turn out to love and vice versa. It’s not fair for me to read all these negative reviews about a story that I consider to be amazing. People have different opinions on things – we like thing that other people hate, we hate things that other people love. Being opinionated makes us human (other than, you know, the whole biological, species, DNA stuff). But from now on I have decided that if I buy a book I’m really interested in, I won’t read its reviews until after I have read it myself and formed my own unaffected judgement on it.

Are you a GoodReads user? If so, how do you think it affects your reading habits?

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