Goodreads: Some of Its Quirks

See the first post of this series, published yesterday, linked here: Goodreads: Why It is So Useful.

I will be one of the first to admit that, while finding Goodreads useful, the website also has its quirks. I love Goodreads; it's usually the first thing I recommend to up-and-coming readers - get a Goodreads account. Yet these little annoyances are there, and they can make the website a bit difficult at times.

All of the sub-genres. This was one of the "good things" I shared about in yesterday's post, but there's a fine line between "a lot of sub-genres" and "too many sub-genres." I feel like Goodreads is teetering over that line. I understand that people want to know exactly what is going on in a book's story, but if "romance" is in the book but not a huge role, then that book should not be in the romance genre in any way, shape, or form.

Not having all of the books you're reading (or even want to read) in the Goodreads database. This is one of the most annoying things, I find. This usually happens one of two times: if you have a really old (usually published before 2000) book or a book that's been published recently. I find this annoying because I want to include all of the books I have read a particular year, but I can't because Goodreads doesn't have that one book.

The Goodreads Choice Awards is essentially a popularity contest. Goodreads has often included books that haven't been released yet into their yearly Choice Awards, but because the author is popular, that book (despite not being published until after the Choice Awards) tends to get more votes. Even with the published books, you tend to get a bunch of votes for a particular book because the author was popular or because there was a good film adaptation. I understand that there's no way for Goodreads to control who votes for what books, but they can do a little better.

The Upcoming Releases section(s) can be a bit difficult to manage and negotiate. I love being able to find recent releases, but sometimes . . . it can be so hard to negotiate the recent/upcoming releases because of all the sub-genres (here we are again). Most of the time, I just want to see all the books under the umbrella genre (history, let's say), and then each book's sub-genres can be visible somehow next to or under the book's title.

There are a few other quirks about Goodreads that bother me, but these are the only ones I could think of.