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For several years I've been a user of Goodreads [1]. It's a very popular platform, and I primarily use it for keeping track of the books I've read, for receiving suggestions about new books, and for keeping up with what some of my friends are reading.
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It's a good service (though sometimes a little slow) - the website and mobile app are nice to use. However, as with any closed system, it's always a worry of mine to think about what might happen if the service were to disappear or if I were to get locked out for some reason.
More recently I've been watching the progress and development of BookWyrm [2] - a decentralised and federated (through ActivityPub [3]) social reading platform. As such it can co-operate with other "fediverse" services, such as Mastodon [4]. The platform aims to allow users to record their reading activity, reviews, and follow others.
The Join BookWyrm [5] website advertises some known instances [6] on the web. Although I understand the underlying technology project powering these instances is still in its relatively early stages, I was excited to try one out for myself.
I signed-up to the bookwyrm.social [7] instance and set up my profile [8].
In the short time I've been using it, I've found the interface to be clear and focused (without all the extra bloat Goodreads comes with). I was even able to import my Goodreads data (after exporting it first as a CSV). The website scales nicely so that it's also highly usable on my phone's browser.
It feels safer to be using open-source software for managing another piece of my online data footprint, and it's great to become more involved in the decentralised movement and community.
I've already discovered some ineteresting "to-read" books. I look forward to exploring more over the coming months, and to continue seeing how the project develops.
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