Why Goodreads is bad for reading morale

Reading goals, social media and why I'm not going to share how many books I read this year

In theory, I don’t approve of yearly reading goals and round-ups. They take all the fun out of reading and make a hobby feel like work, a line which is already too fine when you work in Publishing and spend your weekends reading submissions. A book can change your life; it shouldn’t be reduced to a number which takes you closer to an arbitrary goal you set yourself.

The curse of social media

Social media is definitely to blame for this numbers-obsessed approach to reading. I’ve always counted how many books I read each year, but I used to do it out of curiosity. Listing the titles in my bullet journal and reflecting on my reading habits became an enjoyable annual ritual which I looked forward to every December, and I loved using a ‘book bracket’ to help me choose my favourite read of the year. It was only when I started using Goodreads properly a couple of years ago that I set a reading goal for the first time. I used to think it was quite pointless, since I read so many books for work which would never count towards my total, but at the start of 2023 I decided I’d aim for 60 books. I hated how it immediately made reading feel like another thing on my todo list, something I could do either well or badly. Every time I’d log a book and give it a rating, Goodreads would remind me I was behind schedule, and so I started choosing shorter (‘easier’) books to get my numbers up. By Christmas, I was running out of time to reach my goal, so I opted for a few shorter books when I’d usually turn to an old favourite, an unread classic or an immersive epic. Who knows, if I hadn’t been so obsessed with my Goodreads target, I might have read The Bee Sting ten months earlier!

Although these reading goals are completely arbitrary, they are still public. Social media breeds comparison, competition and commerce, and we’d hate to miss our goal when others are smashing theirs out of the park. I genuinely felt anxious this time last year when a friend who works in Publishing shared that she’d read 100 books outside of work. How on earth did she find the time? I couldn’t even read 60 when I was still working in Tech and had a work/life balance! We all know that comparison is the thief of the joy of reading, but that doesn’t stop us from feeling bad about ourselves when we see what everyone else is posting online. And yes, there’s an irony in the fact that I created this Substack (and the associated Instagram account) to share everything I’ve been reading, but I just have to hope you still see me as one of you. I’m not yet a ‘Bookfluencer’, and I’m honestly not sure I’d be able to keep up.

You see, I’m also affected by their numbers. If you’ve spent any time on Bookstagram or BookTok, you’ll see creators who read dozens of books each month and somehow find the time to make reels, carousels and graphics about them all, often outside of their day jobs. I’m a very fast reader — I have a double literature degree and 5+ years in the Publishing industry to thank for that — but there’s just no way I’ll ever read that much. What Eliza Reads is always going to be a reflection of my actual reading habits, but I do still feel like a bit of imposter as I start this new project in a world where there are so many more prolific readers you could turn to for recommendations instead. Because surely someone who reads twice as much as I do will have twice as many books to recommend, or their choices will be even more personalised?

Mindful reading, or literary snobs?

Yet there is another side to the coin, as is always the case on social media, where people judge these creators for reading too much. I’ve recently seen an increase in posts which call for slow, mindful, more critical reading, a reaction to the deluge of content creators reading viral books (mostly romantassy — think Sarah J Maas and the ACOTAR series) and sharing simple reviews with little analysis or depth. [I have so much respect for these creators, but I really can’t stand the ‘silent reviews’ trend. Surely some words are required to persuade someone to pick up a 500+ page book? A book is a huge time commitment; it’s not quite the same as influencing someone to buy a lipstick or pair of trainers…] I do think it’s silly to race through books simply to have something to share on social media, and don’t get me started on those speed-reading apps…

The fact of finishing a book says nothing about the quality of the writing, nor the enjoyment of the reading experience. At university, I read dozens of books each week, but none of them were particularly enjoyable when I had a deadline to meet and a word count to hit, and it’s the same when you work in Publishing. It’s actually a luxury to read a book slowly and to take time to let ideas settle in your mind. Substacks like Closely Reading provide practical tips and prompts to help shift people’s approach to reading, and I love the idea of a slow bookclub, like this read of War and Peace by Simon Haisell, and I definitely hope to read more mindfully and intentionally in 2025.

But I do think there’s an implicit snobbery in some of these conversations about BookTok, especially when people conflate social media with traditional media and complain that readers aren’t engaging with books ‘properly’. The writers often look down on readers who favour new publications over backlist titles or write short, emotion-led reviews instead of critical essays. I understand that the media landscape is changing and books are getting less coverage than they used to, but TikTok is not to blame. These content creators aren’t directly replacing literary critics; they’re just introducing new readers to literature. I recently overhead a Waterstones bookseller rejoicing that “real reading is back in fashion!” and some of the most popular titles keep selling out. I love that TikTok has made books cool again and, while I don’t like colour coordinated bookshelves (or worse — the reverse spine trend), if a BookToker shares that they’ve read 150 romantassy novels this year, good for them. Honestly, that sounds like a lot of fun!

All this to say: I wish we could protect reading from the shame, judgement and comparison that social media has brought into almost every area of our lives. I know that it’s about the consumption as much as the creation of the content, and Strava hasn’t killed my love of running, so there’s still some hope there. I’m planning to move from Goodreads to Storygraph next year and I won’t be setting a reading goal. I love how Storygraph’s UI displays your stats in a pie chart, and hope this will make it easier to analyse my reading habits based on genre, format, country, language, mood and other qualities I find interesting to record, rather than focusing on an arbitrary numerical target.

2024 Reading Wrapped: The Context

I was going to share how many books I’ve read this year and reveal the statistics in a fun way — like a Spotify Wrapped, but for books — but that doesn’t feel appropriate. It really doesn’t matter how many books I’ve read, whether that’s too many for the literary elite — or people who have a vibrant social life and haven’t been on sick leave for several months — or not enough for the prolific content creators of BookTok. I started this newsletter to share the books I love with the people who ask for recommendations, and no friend or family member has ever asked me how many books I read in a year. They just want to know what I’ve enjoyed.

My reading will likely be a little more intentional next year, but this year it really has just been what Eliza feels like reading. For the first half of the year, the novels I read outside of work were chosen out of a pure, unfiltered love of books. When I had time off, I’d generally buy new hardbacks that were on the top of my TBR (to be read pile, which I also explain in this post): Green Dot by Madeleine Gray, Kiley Reid’s Come And Get It, David Nicholls’s You Are Here and Catherine Newman’s Sandwich. I anticipated loving these titles and they also counted as market research, so it made sense to prioritise new releases in the first few months of a glossy new editorial job. In the summer, I started to reach for comfort books, often opting for more commercial novels than the ones I was reading for work. I wanted books that didn’t require quite as much intellectual energy and which had happier (and sappier) endings than the darker, literary novels I usually choose. In the autumn, I read a few non-fiction titles, turning for self-help and research for reassurance and practical advice, where as the last month has seen me looking ahead to books that will be published next year.

In 2024, my average rating was 4.0 and I gave 15 books five stars (Goodreads doesn’t do decimal places). I don’t have an official rating system, I just shoot from the heart. If I loved a book — because of the writing, plot, readability, relatability or just how it made me feel — I’ll give it five stars. If I really enjoyed a book but something stopped me from completely losing myself in the writing, it’ll get a four star rating. I give three stars to books that weren’t quite right for me, and I hardly ever DNF (the book world’s term for ‘did not finish’, which I wrote about in this post). I’m not sure I’ve ever given a one or two star rating because I’m a nice person and I know that reading is subjected, but I’d probably just DNF if I was hating a book that much.

2024 Reading Wrapped: The Favourites

When I first counted the fifteen books I rated five stars in 2024, I questioned the accuracy of some of those ratings. Some of the titles had a real impact on the way I think about life or literature, whereas others were just really enjoyable reads. I’m just pleased I was able to find so much comfort and joy in literature this year; books really helped me get out of my mind and into someone else’s world. These fifteen favourites ranged from the very literary (Shy by Max Porter and I Will Crash by Rebecca Watson) to the unusually commercial (Green Dot by Madeleine Gray and Margo’s Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe). Interestingly, most of them were new publications, including David Nicholls’s You Are Here, Kaliane Bradley’s The Ministry of Time and Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr!, which I read in hardback as soon as they came out, and two of my favourites won’t be published until next year (Thirst Trap by Gráinne O’Hare and We Pretty Pieces of Flesh by Colwill Brown).

I’m surprised that there weren’t any translated or foreign-language titles in my top five, since I usually read quite widely, but that just reminds me to prioritise more international literature in 2025. I never got round to reading Olga Tokarzcuk’s The Empusium, which I know I’ll love, and most of the titles I mentioned in my Women in Translation post remain on my TBR, so I’ll start with these in the new year!

I’ve shared my five star reads on my Instagram, so head over there for a one-line description of each of these titles if you’re interested.

2024 Reading Wrapped: The Stats

Moving away from the five star reads to the full 2024 list, the statistics are a little different. I read books by authors with 21 different nationalities, but they were mostly British and American, so I’d like to diversify my reading more in 2025. I thought it was a big year of Irish literature, but I actually only read seven books by Irish writers; they just happened to be among my favourite reads of the year (with Kala by Colin Walsh and The Bee Sting by Paul Murray both getting five stars).

I read almost three times as many works of fiction than I did non fiction, and the latter included more self-help books than it usually would. Annie Ernaux was the only author I read twice: I categorised A Simple Passion as fiction and The Use of Photography, which she co-authored with Marc Marie, as non fiction. I read five memoirs, with Fern Brady’s Strong Female Character receiving the top rating and Leslie Jamison’s Splinters following close behind. I think Caroline Calloway’s Scammer was the only self-published novel in the list, and I haven’t gone so far as to divide the other books into publishers, nor Big Five vs indies.

I could spend days analysing my statistics, but I think they’re probably only interesting to me, so I’ll save them for my Betwixtmas bullet journal session and let Storygraph do the work for me in 2025. I wonder how different my statistics will look next year, when I’ve abandoned the arbitrary numerical goal and (hopefully) focused more on quality, diversity and integrity. I’ve seen Bookstagrammers and Substack writers share some wonderful reading goals (see, social media is great when it’s used for inspiration rather than comparison!) and I’ll be back in January with my own reading resolution. For now, I’m going to try to stay offline and spend my time reading, writing and celebrating with my loved ones. Happy Christmas — I can’t wait to hear what you read over the break!

Do you track your reading at all, and what do you think about setting numerical goals? I’d love to hear your favourite reads of 2024 and, as ever, I’m here if you need any recommendations!