Making a Literature Show or Creating Communities?

PalmSwhere many people take advantage of their vacations to delve into all kinds of reading, whether it's the latest new releases that have just arrived in bookstores or the classics they've had their eye on for years. And while the usual ways to choose summer reading continue to work, such as asking booksellers for advice, recently consulting Goodreads has gained traction, a platform with more than 150 million members around the world who rate and review the books they read.

Founded in 2007 by a pair of Journalism and Computer Science students, the app was acquired in 2013 by Amazon in a commercial transaction that seemed to pursue the goal of linking book sales with reader opinions, and numerous writers and publishers participated. However, more than 40 million users log in every month, using it both to keep track of their own readings and to share their opinions on everything they read. Like most digital tools, Goodreads provokes divisions in the sector: some see it as a potentially useful tool, while others reject it for reducing reading to simple numerical ratings.

In this sense, writer Sebastià Alzamora is opposed to this type of platform, which he believes "has nothing to do with literature." "I'm quite against this idea of constantly feeding algorithms," reflects the author, citing Ingrid Guardiola's latest book, The servitude of protocols, as one of the bases of his argument. "This constant desire to measure and score everything, to establish lists of the best of whatever, can be a way of distracting oneself but nothing more. This footballization of literature, of projecting the logic of sports competition, seems to me a contradiction, because literature is just the opposite of competition."

To give just a few examples, with more than 295,000 ratings, Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes, has a score of 3.95 out of 5, while The Diamond Square, by Mercè Rodoreda, with 15,000 ratings, gets a 3.82 out of 5. The novel Wuthering Heights, by Emily Brontë, with almost two million ratings, has an average of 3.90 out of 5, and the first book in the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, achieves a 4.47 out of 5 with over eleven million ratings.

A form of cultural conversation

However, Goodreads isn't all about ratings. Users also have the option to share reviews, which can be more or less extensive—from a couple of words or icons to a couple of pages—and also more or less reasoned. Some border on insults, while others analyze in detail issues such as the plot, style, or historical context of the works. Thus, the platform can also serve to gather the opinions of all types of users about certain works, both from booksellers and publishers, as well as from the authors themselves. This option is valued by writer Sebastià Portell, who acknowledges that adesiara accesses Goodreads to see how his books have been "received or interpreted by different audiences." "My approach to literature is to conceive of it as a form of cultural conversation: writing to begin or to add another voice to a dialogue. And, therefore, I see Goodreads as a space where it's perhaps not easy to have that dialogue, because it's difficult to have a constant response, but it is a space where it's possible to intuit or to gauge the reception of a book." For years, he has barely used it, neither to leave reviews nor to record the books he's read.

The president of the Association of Catalan Language Writers, however, suggests that it's important to find "a balance" in the relationship that authors have with these types of platforms. "Writing with too much thought about reader reception is negative, but I don't think it's interesting to forget about it altogether either. Taking it from a certain ironic distance: that's what I would recommend everyone do in the world of networks and the internet."

For her part, writer Laura Gost states that she hadn't checked her book reviews on Goodreads until she received the ARA Baleares proposal. "Normally I disconnect a bit from the reviews. I value the comments that come to me directly and I appreciate them, but I don't go looking for them, not on Amazon, not on Goodreads, not anywhere. In the end, reading good things about your books makes you happy and reading bad ones makes you feel bad. So I just keep at it."

In any case, there are dozens of books by island authors that have been rated or commented on Goodreads with curious results: while all of Miquel Costa y Llobera's work has received fewer than 44 ratings, only one of Joana Marcús's books, Before December, has garnered over 120,000 likes.

Island classics according to Goodreads users

You can rate books on Goodreads not only by contemporary authors such as Sebastià Alzamora, Sebastià Portell, and Laura Gost: on the platform you can find, rate, and comment on works by Ramon Llull and Miquel Costa i Llobera, among many others. Furthermore, some of the reviews these authors' works have received are recent, published weeks or months ago, which demonstrates the relevance of their work. These are some of the opinions users have left on various island classics.

The Sea

Blai Bonet

3.68 out of 5 (212 votes)

The novel starring Andreu Ramallo and Manuel Tur has received some thirty reviews—some in German. Some describe it as "the hidden side of Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain," and many use adjectives like dark, raw, and violent to describe the story Bonet tells. "A literary monument" and "a book of disturbing depth" are featured in some reviews, while others claim they haven't fully understood the book.

Joana E.

Maria Antònia Oliver

3.93 out of 5 (283 votes)

Maria Antònia Oliver's works have over 150 reviews on Goodreads, 14 of them linked to Joana E., published in 1992. While most are brief, there are some longer ones that analyze different aspects of the work, such as the plot and the protagonists, as well as the treatment of certain issues. "A clearly Rodoredian style that quickly hooks you," summarizes one user, who describes the work's ending as "too abrupt."

The Butchers

Guillem Frontera

3.68 out of 5 (212 votes)

One of Guillem Frontera's highest-rated novels on the platform, along with Tyrannosaurus and The Route of the Kangaroos, is precisely his debut novel, The Butchers. One of the most enthusiastic and recent reviews—from July 2025—repeats over and over again "read The Butchers!" while another states it "as if Frontera had had a crystal ball that predicted the future." "Long live symbolic and orderly novels," adds another Goodreads user.

The Book of Beasts

Ramon Llull

2.81 out of 5 (744 votes)

More than a thousand reviews with an average of 3.17 out of 5: these are the figures for the dozens of works by Ramon Llull, an author with around fifty followers, that can be reviewed on Goodreads. The sixty or so reviews of The Book of Beasts, with an average score of 2.8, are heterogeneous: from a "boring" and "repetitive" book to a "great book that remains relevant even after eight centuries." In this case, the reviews are in Catalan and Spanish, as well as in English.

Inside the Last Blue

Carme Riera

3.88 out of 5 (243 votes)

"A very good book that should be more famous," begins one of the reviews of Dins el último azul (Din the Last Blue), a novel by Carme Riera that has garnered around twenty comments on the platform. Most of them highlight both the author's skill in translating historical events to paper and her style. "She is able to make us enter into all these characters and make us feel what they feel, creating a polyphonic work that is one of the pinnacles of Catalan literature," reads another review.

39º in the Shade

Antònia Vicens

3.48 out of 5 (67 votes)

The vocabulary Vicens uses in 39º in the Shade, a book published in the late 1960s, is one of the recurring themes in most reviews, whether for good – "I highlight the richness of the vocabulary," says one user – or bad – "if you're from Barcelona you might need a dictionary or accept. Furthermore, it is curious that one of the comments highlights that reading the novel it is well known that the author "is a poet," although Vicens did not debut in poetry until 2019.

Bearn or the Doll Room

Llorenç Villalonga

3.21 out of 5 (852 votes)

Also in Catalan, Spanish, and English, the 60 reviews signed by Goodreads users regarding Bearn or the Doll Room, a novel written by Llorenç Villalonga, range from a simple statement like "I really enjoyed it" to long expositions where references such as Giusepp's The Cattopardo are discussed. The content of the reviews is also very diverse: for some, it is one of the best books ever written, while for others, it is "too dense and tedious" to read.

Horses into Darkness

Baltasar Porcel

3.71 out of 5 (45 votes)

Once again, vocabulary is one of the most prominent elements in the comments accompanying Cavalls's review of Into the Darkness. One of them, in fact, contains a list of what the user considers to be errors in the novel, published in 1975, including the use of words like "lamp" or verbs like "say goodbye." Another user opines that the book provides "a different and 'evil' perspective on typical novels," while another summarizes it as "boring and uneven, but very good!"