We had some pretty harsh rain for most of today, which made doing the laundry a non-optimal activity. As much as I could use the dryer to process things fully, I was really hoping to be able to hang stuff for even a little bit. I really wish I had managed to take advantage of the limited sun over the weekend, but our busy weekend schedule sort of got in the way of that.
While we were at Komiket Pasig, someone suggested that Tobie should set up a page on The Story Graph, which is another book-tracking site similar to Goodreads, to help with the promotions for his graphic novel. As the one more active on book-focused social media platforms, I figured I'd finally try the platform out. I had heard some pretty good things about the platform here and there, but had never bothered to try it out, given the comfort of just staying on Goodreads.
And it's not like I actively chose to be on Goodreads. I started as a Shelfari user, which was the first book-related social network that Amazon had acquired. But once they acquired Goodreads, eventually all Shelfari users were migrated to the larger social network. It wasn't too painful a transition, and I eventually grew to appreciate the Goodreads reading challenges as a way to push my reading a bit more. And as much as it's super convenient for (most) books I read on my Kindle (usually) automatically get tracked on Goodreads, the platform hasn't really changed or innovated much since the time I joined the platform 10 years ago. If anything, things got worse when they integrated the little Kindle reading achievements with the Goodreads Reading Challenge, which results in weird double-tracking of some of my read titles.
So now I'm testing The Story Graph (look for @rgsunico since the profile URL isn't publicly available unless you've signed up for the platform. As this is only the second time I've ever tried to migrate my digital library records, the process hasn't been entirely painless. As long as I can keep my 2026 books read accurate, I should be good. I expect I'll probably use the platforms in parallel instead of treating this as some sort of full migration. As long as I use a Kindle for reading, the inevitability of Goodreads integrated features remains. But I do recognize that The Story Graph has more interesting reading stats and categorizations for things that totally work for book nerds like me.
Last bit of domestic nerdery: I think my birthday present for myself will be investing in Board Game Stats, a paid app that integrates with the BoardGameGeek database and provides more detailed stats based on your collection and your logged plays. There was an older unofficial app that did a decent job for free, but recent changes to the BGG API have rendered that side-loaded app pretty much dead. I've still been tracking my plays, but now via the less intuitive official BGG app; that one has no stats to share based on player win rates or how games fare. And I really miss being able to share those data points with our friends to give a greater sense of progression across game nights.
For both The Story Graph and Board Game Stats, my only worry is that the platforms end up being too technical, and thus I won't be able to make full use of the stats that they provide. But it's too early to tell - updates later on once I've had a chance to test both apps fully.
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