GoodReads

They take away the authors rights to their own work by giving them zero control over the author's content. Shady behavior and unethical.

Problems with features and user accounts. User Krista vrapi won't allow messages and friends requests sent to her good reads account.

Book was good but wayyyyyy too expensive to read through goodreads. Never again will I read a book through goodreads,

Community here tends to provide book reviews of variable quality and reliability, I recommend searching for reviews of a book on Amazon.com. There you can compare the percentage of a book's rating that received 5 star ratings or higher with other titles, recommended reading by the NY times, bestseller lists curated by Amazon's editors, etc. Look a title up at ALA.org or read a review in publications like School Library Journal. Bottom line - pass on this one unless given no other alternatives. Not recommended.

Permits authors to network and swap reviews, falsely inflating the perceived value of their work. Scam all the way. The site is set up to encourage scams like this, and they ban anyone who protests. Keeping unscrupulous authors happy is Goodreads' bread-and-butter. I like keeping track of my books there and sharing my opinion, but I would never buy a book based on the reviews I read there, and I stay far, far away if something was self-published. Too bad the scammers ruin it for everyone else!

I download goodreads as an app on my iPad to help keep track of the books I was reading. I highly recommend this site, it turned out to so much more than a place to store lists. You can add other people to see what they recommend or have suggested books depending on your preferences, I have read so many authors that I would have never really picked up.
Give it a go for me there is no downside to this site it's free so if it doesn't suit your needs you can get rid of it.

I really enjoy this site. Good community of readers posting thoughtful comments that give you a good idea about whether to give a book a read or not. Given the price of books these days, it's worth a visit. You also get news and promos from authors or publishing labels you are interested in. I'm all for something that gets people interested in - and buying - books.

I've heard that publishing and/or PR companies send unsolicited ads trying to get you to try their authors but I haven't received any.

If you are careful, and know who to avoid, you can do some valuable networking on Goodreads, finding some great new books and meeting some great new friends. But you have to approach this site with extreme caution, because there is a small group of people, supported by a number of the employees and volunteer librarians on the site, who do their best to run off and destroy the careers of any Indie authors that come to their attention. Authors, take EXTREME care on this site. Readers, take many reviews with a grain of salt - a lot of them are fake. Usually it is easy enough to tell, but not always. If the site would more carefully enforce its Terms of Service regarding personal attacks on fellow Goodreads members and authors, it would make a huge difference; as it is, they seem to be rather selective about it.

It's clearly best/biggest of type, hence i was highly motivated. That didn't last long. It's a very typical kind of website: looks slick but has a clunky interface and worse 'help'. I waded through its ratings process [rate 20 books or die!], when i didn't need GR recommendations.
I was there to meet people. I gathered the only way to do that is to join a "discussion group". But i couldn't even find any, much less join one. I'm tired of fighting interfaces [of apps too] so i gave up. I should've had more patience? Funny, that's what they all say.

This site helps manage, catalog, and rate books. You can organize them by ones you have read, want to read, own, and so on. They also offer giveaways of books not yet released that authors will give for free in addition for an honest rating (which isn't required just encouraged). TRY THE GIVEAWAYS. So far, in the past year i have won almost 40 books (want proof, I would be happy to show you my many emails and exploding bookshelf haha!). To those saying this site only reviews top books and publishers, that is false. The site itself reviews nothing, its the users that review. And thanks to programs like the new book giveaways, obscure books are getting ratings! I also love that authors themselves use this site and often interact with readers!

I've been a member for a while. They WILL send you unwanted and unsolicited emails. For example advertising events even after you unsubscribe 4x from ALL emails. I just got one that says

You are receiving this message because you've read a book by Anne Rice. We have some exciting news for you!

Um. Yeah and I rated that book I read 1 star. They don't care what your opinion of a writer is. They just push them on you.

My recommendations were broken for a year and a half. They fixed them the week before they sold the site to Amazon.

Facts on books are often wrong. Help is not helpful. It's a fairly bad site that Amazon bought when Goodreads was looking into selling books. Expect it to get swallowed at some point by Amazon who didn't want it for the community but was preventing competition..