[stolenmerch]

I seem to be one of the few people here who likes Goodreads and uses it daily. I have no compelling reason to switch, but Booqsi looks gorgeous and fast, so I was interested in trying it out. I know it's early days, but a few things stand out.

Overall, the data seems a bit messy. I tried adding a few books from my currently reading list on Goodreads and ran into some problems. The first book I tried to add had a duplicate entry. Both had identical metadata but are separate records; if I marked one as finished it didn't update the other. Many books seem to be missing editions, alternate covers, subtitles, and other important details. Other times multiple editions seem to be split out as separate titles but with no clue to edition. This gets confusing fast for certain types of books.

It seems difficult to find people to follow. Everything looks to be private by default so I couldn't find people based on the books they read. The "people who read it" feature does not seem to work as expected. It seems it doesn't include books currently being read or books simply put on a favorite shelf without marking it 'read' - either that or I'm locked out of seeing what people I don't follow are reading. I have to follow them first? As it stands, I don't know anyone personally on Booqsi, so I'm relying on following interesting strangers based on reading habits, which I can't seem to do. It's doubtful my friends who already don't use Goodreads very much are going to switch, so I'm looking for Booqsi to be more like a "twitter for books", which it currently isn't without the option to be public.

A couple more books didn't exist and I didn't see an option to add it. I assume some crowdsourcing option like Goodreads is on the roadmap for Booqsi though.