First Qtr 2025 Reading Wrap-up & comparing book tracking platforms

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Happy April 1! I have no jokes; instead, in the grand tradition of book content creators everywhere, here is a reading wrap-up. And because it's a holiday here in the Philippines, I actually took the time to compare wrap-ups of Goodreads, Fable, and Storygraph. And as you'll see here, I used Storygraph. 

Honestly, I update Goodreads and Fable more. But Fable has the disadvantage of being difficult to add new books, and I like to include the Philippine-published titles I've read.

I love you, Philippine publisher and writer friends, but I do let out a yell of frustration whenever I try to add Philippine title on Goodreads, and I can't find it. And yes, Goodreads is my first stop, because of longevity and because from experience, it's highly likely that if the title isn't on Goodreads, it's not going to be on Fable or Storygraph. But the inverse is not true. All to say, Goodreads still has the largest database.

But it's not so much of a problem if the title isn't on Goodreads, to be honest, because I can add the title myself. I fortunately have librarian status on Goodreads--something that I think I acquired more than a decade ago, when all you needed to do was sign up, because Goodreads needed librarians? I hear that now, the application process is no longer as easy.

Goodreads reading challenge counter. (Pretty happy I'm ahead at this point of the year.)

So bottom line, when it comes to depth and breadth of titles and ease of adding (for me, at least), Goodreads wins. But as with many in the book community, I'm also trying to lessen dependence on Amazon, who still owns Goodreads, hence I also update on Fable. 

Fable is pretty, and I think the social aspect is promising. They also make the wrap-ups easy to generate. Admittedly, I'm less social now, so I haven't really maximized all its features. I tried updating the currently reading portions, but I found it more effort than I was willing to indulge in, so similar to how I use Goodreads, I just use it to log my read titles. 

The issue with Fable, though, is that it's not so easy to add titles. Fable says you can do so through the Fable browser plugin, which I tried, but I could not for the life of me find the Add Book button. It's entirely likely I missed it, but I did more than cursory clicking, so maybe it's also not so easy to find?

Fable's counter. It's 2 less than Goodreads bec I can't add two Philippine indie published titles.

Which drove me to Storygraph. I haven't updated Storygraph this year at all. Like Fable, it's prettier than Goodreads (not really a high bar), and has more functionality. It was actually all the functionality that dissuaded me from using it as much. In particular, I thought the review process took a lot of effort. I just wanted to click the stars, and ideally, to reach those stars in as few clicks as possible. But Storygraph asks a lot of questions that I did not think it within my bandwidth to respond to. 

However, when I checked it today, I found it was also quite easy to add missing books in Storygraph, and you didn't need a librarian status at all. Editing books required you to file a ticket, yes, but adding them only required you to provide the same information you would to Goodreads. The interface and process was also easier than Goodreads. And the other bigger upside is that Storygraph has better statistics and images for those stats. 

And so, here is my first quarter reading wrap-up, care of Storygraph! 

SINING KILLING by Randy Valiente
HUMAN ACTS by Han Kang
IMPOSSIBLE CREATURES by Katherine Rundell
CLEAN SWEEP by Ilona Andrews
THE EXPENDABLE MAN by Dorothy B. Hughes
THE THINGS YOU CAN SEE ONLY WHEN YOU SLOW DOWN by Haemin Sunim
SAY IT OUT LOUD by Ashley Schumacher (not yet published)
ORBITAL by Samantha Harvey

BUCKEYE by Patrick Ryan (not yet published)
PRINCESS OF BLOOD by Sarah Hawley (not yet published)
PALESTINE by Joe Sacco
SILVER ELITE by Dani Francis

THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE by Thomas Hardy
THE SUMMER WAR by Naomi Novik (not yet published)
THE SECRET OF SECRETS by Dan Brown (not yet published)
THERE WAS AN OLD LADY WHO LIVED IN A BOOK by Jomike Tejido
KISS AWAY THE GOODBYE by H. Bentham
BRICK BY BRICK by Myke Santos
TINY EXPERIMENTS by Anne-Laure Le Cunff
THE NEXT CONVERSATION by Jefferson Fisher


There are a number of titles here that have not been published yet, and yes, I have read the upcoming Dan Brown. And the upcoming Naomi Novik! No comments and spoilers, out of respect to the fans. (Or perhaps the only thing I can say is that I think the fans will be pleased!) And if you're new here, I do normally read some books in advance because I work for the publisher. Most I just "sample" (something you tend to do when you have to get to know a lot of books), but these ones I finished.


It also looks like I've done a good number of nonfiction titles for this first quarter. Ngl, I think I'm gonig to finish more nonfic this year, because I finally have the company audiobook app. I can't really do fiction audiobooks, because I lose the thread of the story, so all my audiobooks are nonfic. In fact, I did the audiobooks for TINY EXPERIMENTS and THE NEXT CONVERSATION, both of which were read by the authors. I finished each of those in a day. I may be entering my audiobook era. 


No surprises from this graph: I love SF&F and romance, though equally with literary fiction. I find myself switching across these genres; it's personally more interesting that way.



And I don't really know what to do with this graph of moods, as my thinking process for selecting my next read isn't this in depth or thought out: not even identifying what mood I'm in. But it also says I like dark & adventurous reads, and yes, that tracks. 

I was telling a few friends that blogging takes more work than social media. Case in point, I think I've spent nearly a couple of hours putting this post together (including the testing of platforms). So, though I was thinking of adding a few notes for each of the books I've read so far, it may have to wait for another blog post, because...well...I've spent as much time here as I'm willing to. And I'm really trying to be more mindful not just of what I share where (see this previous post), but also how much time I'm willing to spend on things. 

I hope you've had good reads the past quarter, too, inspite of (gestures to everything)...yeah. Happy reading! 

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