Last year, I lamented the poor design of Goodreads — a much-needed platform where readers can review books they’ve read and track those they want to. Poor search functionality, ugly aesthetics, an embarrassingly terrible recommendation algorithm, and buried club and group features make the site unpleasant to use. Since the story came out, Goodreads hasn’t done much to improve its deficiencies. Instead, it seems content to rest on its laurels as a near-monopoly owned by Amazon, benefiting from its massive existing user base while being, apparently, deserted by its design team.

大号 AST年，我感叹Goodreads的设计不良 -一个急需的平台，读者可以查看他们读过的书和跟踪那些他们想。 糟糕的搜索功能，丑陋的外观，令人尴尬的可怕推荐算法以及隐蔽的俱乐部和团体功能，使该网站难以使用。 自从故事问世以来，Goodreads并没有做很多事情来改善它的不足。 取而代之的是，似乎受益于亚马逊拥有的几乎垄断的桂冠，这得益于其庞大的现有用户群，而显然却被其设计团队所抛弃。

Tech-savvy readers, many of whom work in technology and design, have responded to Goodreads’ inadequacies by launching their own, personalized book sites. These sites are diverse, each one with its own particular focus: One might be a chronological list of books read by the owner in a year; another may be a complex map of reading material grouped by subject and theme. Some are totally personal, meant almost as private logs for people to track their own reading progress, while others are explicitly outward-facing, intended to offer recommendations and compel conversations.

达意savvŸ读者，其中许多人在技术和设计工作，已经通过推出自己的，个性化的图书网站回应Goodreads'的不足之处。 这些站点是多种多样的，每个站点都有其自己的重点：一个可能是所有者在一年中阅读的书籍的时间顺序列表； 另一个可能是按主题和主题分组的复杂阅读材料图。 有些完全是私人的，意味着几乎就像私人日志一样，人们可以追踪自己的阅读进度，而另一些则是面向外部的，旨在提供建议并强迫对话。

What these sites have in common is a reader’s desire to engage more deeply with their reading than is currently possible by 1) merely reading the book and setting it aside; or 2) resorting to the shallow functions available on Goodreads. These talented readers are wresting control of the book-tracking market out of Goodreads’ hands, crafting the kind of reading sites they want to see, and infusing creativity and resourcefulness into an online landscape that has in many ways become uniform and bland.

这些站点的共同点在于，与现在相比，读者希望与阅读者进行更深入的互动：1)仅阅读书籍并将其搁置一边； 或2)求助于Goodreads上的浅层函数。 这些才华横溢的读者正在从Goodreads手中夺取对图书跟踪市场的控制权，设计他们想看的阅读站点，并将创造力和机智注入到在线景观中，这种景观在许多方面已经变得统一而乏味 。

Amanda Pinsker, a San Francisco-based product designer, has one of the most unique and beautiful book websites I’ve seen. The site, which she started in 2018, features large scans of the book cover next to the place where Pinsker spent most of her time reading it — such as “at Golden Gate Park” or “in my bed” — alongside brief passages that she calls “underlines” (since she marks up her books with pens, not highlighters, she says) and a brief review of her thoughts about the book.

旧金山的产品设计师Amanda Pinsker拥有我见过的最独特，最漂亮的图书网站之一 。 她于2018年开始在该网站上浏览大型图书封面，旁边是平克(Pinsker)大部分时间在读书的地方(例如“在金门公园”或“在我的床上”)以及她简短的段落。称“下划线”(因为她用笔而不是荧光笔标记她的书)，并简要回顾了她对这本书的看法。

Wait, should we bring back Livejournal?

等等，我们应该带回Livejournal吗？

“I just always hated Goodreads and wanted a better way to remember and reflect on my reading. I didn’t want it to be about tracking necessarily, but almost a way to be expressive about my reading,” she says. “A lot of my weekends were enjoying parks with a book, and [I realized] how much my reading was informed by where I was when I read that book. So basically, I couldn’t find a good way to do that, so I made it myself.”

“我只是一直讨厌Goodreads，想要一种更好的方式来记住和反思我的阅读。 她说：“我不希望它一定要跟踪，而几乎是表达我的阅读的一种方式。” “很多周末我都在看书的时候在公园里玩耍，[我意识到]当我读那本书的时候，我的读书对我有多大帮助。 所以基本上，我找不到一个很好的方法来做到这一点，所以我自己做到了。”

Pinsker says she wanted the place where she read the book to have equal prominence to the book itself, so she sizes those images more or less equally. I find Pinsker’s site particularly clever because, while it’s rare we discuss the external environment in which we read a book, it’s undeniably influential in many cases. I read Kate Milliken’s Kept Animals on my fire escape in April, right as the weather was perfect but the outside world was falling apart; I’ll always remember that book in the context of the early days of the pandemic. My memory of crying at the conclusion to Rebecca Makkai’s The Great Believers is vivid: It was evening in spring 2019, and the nights were still cold, so I was wrapped in my favorite blanket on the cozy armchair in my bedroom. Like scent memories, book memories are a neglected, but often crucial, part of the reading process, making Pinsker’s method of cataloging her virtual bookshelf especially innovative.

Pinsker说，她希望阅读本书的地方与本书本身具有同等的知名度，因此她或多或少地对这些图像进行了大小调整。 我发现Pinsker的网站特别聪明，因为尽管我们很少讨论讨论读书的外部环境，但是在许多情况下它无疑具有影响力。 我在四月份的防火梯上读过凯特·米利肯(Kate Milliken)的《 守恒的动物 》，正好天气晴朗，但外面的世界正在崩溃。 我将永远记得大流行初期的那本书。 我对丽贝卡·麦凯(Rebecca Makkai)的《伟大的信徒》的结论哭泣的记忆很生动：那是2019年春天的傍晚，夜晚仍然很冷，所以我被裹在我最喜欢的毯子里，放在卧室舒适的扶手椅上。 像气味记忆一样，书本记忆是阅读过程中被忽略但往往至关重要的一部分，这使Pinsker对其虚拟书架进行编目的方法尤其具有创新性。

Other sites take a more external approach to their book websites, and are designed for other people to stumble across and learn from what they find. Juvoni Beckford, a New York-based software engineer, says he wanted to make his website as useful for people as he could. “It is definitely built for me first and foremost, but with the assumption that I should make it simple and intuitive so that other people can utilize it,” he says. “I have my own dream version of Goodreads, but without the social aspect to it. So it’s kind of personal. It feels a little bit more authentic to my personality.”

其他站点对他们的图书网站采取了更为外部的方法，旨在让其他人偶然发现并从他们的发现中学习。 纽约的软件工程师Juvoni Beckford说，他希望使自己的网站对人们尽可能有用。 他说：“它绝对是我的首要任务，但前提是我应该使其简单直观，以便其他人可以使用它。” “我有自己梦想的Goodreads版本，但没有社交方面的内容。 所以这是个人的。 这对我的性格更加真实。”

Beckford sorts the books on his website chronologically in the order he posted them by default, but users of the site can also filter books by categories, such as psychology, personal development, and fiction. There are also custom sorting options like Beckford’s rating of the book and how easy the book was to read. This detailed approach to his book website reflects the way he reads, using a note-taking system he created, which he calls the BAGEL method. Beckford reads with a rainbow of sticky notes, marking the book with the color sticky note that applies to the passage. B, which stands for “big ideas,” gets blue sticky notes; A, for “antagonism,” gets red sticky notes and marks passages that are challenging, confusing, or upsetting; G, for “general idea,” gets yellow; e, for “external reference,” is when the author references another writer or research and gets orange; and finally L stands for “list of statements,” when the author makes a list of different ideas.

贝克福德(Beckford)按照默认的发布时间顺序对网站上的图书进行排序，但是该网站的用户还可以按类别(例如心理学，个人发展和小说)来过滤图书。 还有一些自定义排序选项，例如贝克福德对该书的评分以及该书的易读性。 对他的图书网站的这种详细处理方法使用他创建的笔记系统(称为BAGEL方法)反映了他的阅读方式。 贝克福德(Beckford)读着彩虹般的便签，在书上标出了适用于该段落的彩色便签。 代表“大创意”的B获得蓝色便签； A，代表“对抗”，得到红色的便签，并标记出具有挑战性，令人困惑或沮丧的段落； G，代表“一般想法”，变黄； e，对于“外部参考”，是指作者引用另一位作家或研究成果并变成橙色； 最后，当作者列出不同观点时，L代表“声明列表”。

For anyone struggling to focus on or understand their reading material right now, note-taking, summarizing, and tracking are all great internal and external motivators to encourage more in-depth reading. Scores of studies point to the benefits to reading comprehension afforded by note-taking and summarizing, and, as I pointed out in my Microprocessing column about my great love for spreadsheets, tracking and journaling are great for encouraging better, healthier behavior or accomplishing goals. Since starting my Medium book blog and an Instagram devoted to books — while tracking each and every read on that god-forsaken website, Goodreads — the number of books I’ve read has steadily grown: In 2018, I read 35 books, in 2019 I read 55, and so far this year, I’ve read 54. Still, thanks to active dog-earring, note-taking, and regular reviewing, my reading comprehension hasn’t declined as that number has shot up.

对于现在努力专注于或理解其阅读材料的任何人，记笔记，汇总和跟踪都是内部和外部激励因素，它们可以鼓励更深入的阅读。 大量的研究表明， 记笔记和总结可为阅读理解带来好处，正如我在“微处理”专栏中所指出的那样，即我对电子表格的热爱，跟踪和日记功能对于鼓励更好，更健康的行为或实现目标非常有用。 自从启动我的中型图书博客和一个致力于图书的Instagram-跟踪那个被上帝抛弃的网站Goodreads上的所有阅读内容以来，我阅读的图书数量一直在稳步增长：2018年，我在2019年阅读了35本书我读了55岁，今年到目前为止，我读了54岁。不过，由于积极养狗，记笔记和定期复习，我的阅读理解并没有因为这个数字的上升而下降。

“I like to think it makes me more reflective to prompt myself to write a few words when I finish reading,” says Tessa Thornton, a Toronto-based software engineer at Vox Media. “I like having a central place to collect recommended and planned reading — I feel like I’m more likely to actually read the stuff I plan to read.” Thornton built her book website on a platform called Glitch, which provides tools and support for developers to make simple websites and apps. Anyone who likes Thornton’s web app can take her code and make their own with it by clicking the small fish icon at the bottom of the page.

Vox Media的多伦多软件工程师Tessa Thornton说：“我喜欢阅读结束后提示自己写几句话，这让我更有反思性。” “我喜欢在中心位置收集推荐和计划的阅读书，我觉得我更有可能实际阅读我打算阅读的书。” 桑顿在名为Glitch的平台上建立了自己的图书网站 ，该平台为开发人员提供了制作简单网站和应用程序的工具和支持。 任何喜欢Thornton的Web应用程序的人都可以通过单击页面底部的小鱼图标来获取她的代码，并自己编写代码。

“ [Glitch has] a lot of stuff that is geared towards beginners and nondevelopers, but to build this, I felt like I had to know how to make an app,” says Thornton. For people who don’t want to mess with code, another simple — but possibly more expensive — solution is using websites like Weebly, Squarespace, or Wix. “There’s a growing ecosystem of these no code platforms where you can use drag and drop tools and build an app without coding experience.”

“(小故障)有很多面向初学者和非开发人员的东西，但是要构建它，我觉得我必须知道如何制作应用程序，”桑顿说。 对于不希望弄乱代码的人，另一种简单但可能更昂贵的解决方案是使用Weebly，Squarespace或Wix等网站。 “没有这些代码平台的生态系统正在不断发展，您可以使用拖放工具来构建没有编码经验的应用程序。”

I went the Weebly route, after attempting to use Wix only to get stuck on a loading page for 10 minutes. The very preliminary results (I made it in an hour or two) can be found here. I’m not sure I’ll keep it up, but I like that I have much more control over how my thoughts about the books are presented. Bookstagram, the Instagram community dedicated to reading, is frankly, kind of depressing, as it’s a platform more about images than words. Naturally, the focus is on the picture, and I’m no photographer. Medium is beautifully designed, but I’m limited in how I can customize it (it isn’t Livejournal. Wait, should we bring back Livejournal?). But on my own website, I have as much control over how the images and words are displayed as however much time I’m willing to put into it.

在尝试仅使用Wix停留在加载页面10分钟之后，我走了Weebly路线。 可以在这里找到非常初步的结果(我在一两个小时内就完成了)。 我不确定会不会继续下去，但是我喜欢我对书本的想法有更多的控制权。 坦率地说，致力于阅读的Instagram社区Bookstagram令人沮丧，因为它是一个平台，更注重图像而非文字。 自然，焦点在照片上，我不是摄影师。 Medium设计精美，但我在自定义方式方面受到限制(它不是Livejournal。等等，我们应该带回Livejournal吗？)。 但是在我自己的网站上，无论我愿意投入多少时间，我都可以控制它们的显示方式。

Beckford says his booksite is “more authentic to me and my personality because I’ve handcrafted it. So it’s kind of bringing back the old web feel of uniqueness.” And while not everyone has the tools to create a website as layered as Beckford’s, as clever as Pinsker’s, and as cute as Thornton’s — at least not at first! — it’s well within the capabilities of most people who are familiar with the basics of using the internet. People like, well, me — who spend a lot of time reading and a lot of time online, but are stuck in the never-ending search of how best to merge those two interests (if you can call being online an “interest”).

贝克福德说，他的书店“对我和我的性格更加真实，因为我是手工制作的。 因此，这是一种带回旧网络独特性的感觉。” 虽然不是每个人都拥有创建网站的工具，但这些网站的创建层次与贝克福德的层次，平克的层次一样聪明，与桑顿的层次一样可爱，至少起初不是！ -熟悉大多数使用互联网基础知识的大多数人都可以使用。 人们喜欢，我-他们花费大量时间阅读并花费大量时间在网络上，但是却被无休止地寻找如何最好地合并这两种兴趣(如果您可以将在线称为“兴趣”) 。

Okay, maybe I’m convinced. The Weebly is here to stay.

好吧，也许我说服了。 Weebly在这里停留。