The StoryGraph

The StoryGraph tracks your reading, charts your habits and uses machine learning to recommend books by mood, pace and genre. It imports Goodreads data, offers buddy reads and book clubs, and is mostly free with an optional Plus plan.

The StoryGraph is a reading tracker and book discovery platform built as an Amazon-free alternative to Goodreads. Readers log what they are reading, have finished, want to read or gave up on, and the service turns that history into charts: books and pages per month, the split of moods and pace they read, and the spread of their star ratings. The idea is that seeing your own habits makes it easier to choose better books later. The AI element is a machine learning recommendation engine that studies a reader's preferences and suggests titles to match. What sets it apart is the mood filter. Instead of browsing by genre alone, a reader can combine mood, pace, fiction or nonfiction, and genres to narrow a shelf to something adventurous and fast-paced, or darker, slower and more emotional. Content warnings help people avoid material they find triggering before they commit to a book. Beyond tracking, the site covers the social side of reading. Buddy reads let a group attach live reactions to specific points in a book, with comments locked for each participant until they reach that spot, and machine learning can suggest reading buddies for people who have none. Book clubs support voting on titles, organising meetings and running discussions, while reading challenges cover personal goals or shared events. Smaller touches include half and quarter stars, one-click did-not-finish and owned markers, a private reading journal, custom tags and lists, and an up next queue of five books. It suits keen readers who already keep shelves elsewhere, since Goodreads data can be imported, with custom shelves mapped to tags. Mobile apps exist for iOS and Android, with a download from the website where the stores are unavailable. Most features are free, and an optional Plus plan adds a more personalised experience. The service is run by Nadia Odunayo and Rob Frelow, and it started as a personal side project for building and tracking reading lists.