Goodreads content consolidation

I was using Goodreads for a number of years to track my literature consumption. But I didn’t like that the review box was so small and I had to login every time to search books I’ve read. Todo: add some simple search feature using tags on jekyll.

They citation needed say the brain can’t tell the difference between audio books and physical books. A majority of the imported reviews were consumed via audioCD during my commute to/from work.

Export to _posts process

Had fun tracking my books at goodreads.com but I wanted to consolidate my data to the one true overlord MSFT and use it as content on jsr6720.github.io.

I had just about 245 reviews I wanted to convert to posts so of course I decided to trial ChatGPT 3.5 augmented programming. The bulk of which I documented here goodreads-csv-to-markdown

Goodreads account data

Copied from the account settings/profile page. I joined in May 2016. Prior to this I was tracking books on some now lost google sheet stored on an old google drive account.

232 ratings (3.88 avg) with 219 reviews. I guess maybe I don’t like what I pick.

FAVORITE GENRES: Biography, Business, Classics, History, Non-fiction, Philosophy, and Psychology

These genres were converted to tags as part of this migration.

Was it worth it?

I figured it would take me anywhere from 15-20 min per post to convert it manually. Starting with the csv file.

  1. Create new file
  2. Copy/paste lots of content
  3. fiddle with all the auto gen content
  4. publish

Not only would this be mind numbing, but so long as I spent less than 40 hours on a solution I’d come out ahead. Without a doubt I learned a ton about ChatGPT3.5 capabilities and python. Even at ~10 min a file 245 files would take almost 40 hours. I think I spent about 20 hours in total on various iterations of the script, testing, merge conflicts and niceities. I always did want my own Makefile.

Would I do it again? Absolutely. Now “my content” is in flatfile format the way I would like it. And I deleted my goodreads account. No going back.

Screenshot of stats

good read stats from account overview page

Author’s Note

Significant Revisions

tags: 2024, technology, books, review

EOF/Footnotes