Throughout high school and early college, Weinberg senior Maddie Brown said she couldn’t find the opportunity to read for fun. 

But since 2021, Brown has found a way to enjoy her childhood passion again. Her yearly book goal is 75, which she surpassed in 2022, reading about 90 books. This month, she has already read seven. 

“I was noticing how miserable forms of conventional social media were making me (during the pandemic),” Brown said. “One day, I just looked at my screen time and I was like, ‘Wow, I could have read a book in this time.’” 

Brown started relying on Goodreads — a platform that allows users to catalog the books they’ve read, add reviews and see what their friends are reading — to hold her accountable. Brown, who’s been using the platform since 2014, said she loves Goodreads because it’s the “last vestige of analog internet.” 

Brown said she appreciates the connections she’s able to make with her friends on the app. If her friends post reviews on a book she’s read before, she uses it as an opportunity to strike up a conversation. 

She’s also built up a reputation for recommending books to her friends, and she makes people book lists when they ask for them. 

“Reading brings me so much joy,” Brown said. “I realized I hadn’t prioritized that.” 

For some students, including SESP sophomore Alicia Cai, finding time to read for fun is “difficult.” She said it’s a struggle in college, especially as a humanities student who has multiple reading assignments per day. 

Cai said she used to read a lot more during the pandemic and now tries to read during school breaks. She said she’s tried using Goodreads, but she regularly forgets to update her status and doesn’t read enough to find the platform rewarding. 

Still, she said she enjoys hearing her friends talk about books offline. 

“I have the strongest chance to read something if it’s recommended to me by a friend,” Cai said. “That means (this book) is important to someone around me, which means I will be more interested in it, too.” 

Weinberg sophomore Alivia Wynn said she’s faced similar challenges of finding time to read. Instead of trying to power through 600-page books on top of her work, Wynn said she’s become a fan of audiobooks. 

Using audiobooks allows Wynn to complete mindless day-to-day tasks and still fit in time for reading. She recently finished Ashley Audrain’s “The Push,” a psychological thriller that explores themes of motherhood and generational trauma. 

“I’m a CS major, but my passion is creative writing, and I just felt like my life was being taken over by math and science,” Wynn said. “I was like, ‘I need a book.’” 

Wynn joined Goodreads in December and has tried to get her friends on the platform ever since. She said she enjoys tracking her thoughts on the books she’s listened to and read, as well as seeing reactions from other readers. 

Weinberg sophomore Audrey Zhou said one of her favorite features of book-tracking apps is the ability to read other people’s reviews. If she sees a book with high ratings, she said she’s more inclined to read it. 

Zhou said she’s a “methodical” person who enjoys keeping track of many different things. She joined Goodreads with many of her friends at the beginning of the pandemic. In recent years, she said she’s moved her tracking to The StoryGraph, a Black-woman-owned site, and now has a few friends on that platform, too. 

Ultimately, Zhou said, these apps are a way to help her link her love of reading with her friendships. 

“It’s just another way to connect with people,” Zhou said. “It’s another way to keep a tab on your friends.”

Email: [email protected]

Twitter: @joannah_11

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