READERS! Stop scrolling for a second and listen up. First of all, I'd like to say I'm not being paid to adverstise this, but I stumbled upon it by chance and I fell in love with it straight away. So, genuinely, I HAVE to tell you about Readerly.
You know all those reading apps that suggest you books (Amazon, GoodReads, etc.) , but that at the same time might slightly throw you off because of the star rating sytem? I mean, fair enough, stars are a way to categorize experiences people got from books. But at the same time, you might find a very interesting story - alluring cover, promising plot - and when you try to investigate a bit more before actually buying it, all you see is: ★★★★☆ ★☆☆☆☆ ★★★☆☆ And you are stuck there, wondering: what does that mean? How are the characters? What kind of book is it, really? Why did someone put one star only? What discouraged them? Some people do accompany their review with an explanation, true, but others might not. Readerly is all against that, and when you review a book you don't give it stars, but you actually have to talk about it. Now, don't get scared: you won't have to provide pages and pages of comments.
Readerly uses in fact a system called Gists, and it works more or less like this (this is an example I took from my own page):
You start with a brief summary (that cannot be longer than 200 characters) and you can then add more pages about characters, quotes, warnings and dislikes, and so on. I have been on the app for a couple of days only, but I swear I have seen reviews that made me so curious about books, in a way I have never felt before - and even about genres that are usually not my go-to ones! Also, I can't explain how enthusiastic the review system made me: I honestly felt like going back to read everything I've ever loved and wanting to find a way to communicate it to others. What was the quote in Pride and Prejudice that made me laugh so? And how exactly does Thorin appear in the Hobbit book? So many details I have forgotten, that I now feel are so important to remember!
At the same time, Readerly will suggest you Gists by other users that match your own tastes, so that you can save them and keep them as a reminder when you want to read something new.
Readerly is a newly born idea and it could radically change the way we see books: think about all those stories that you might have liked, but that were not best-sellers or very critically acclaimed. There might be people around the world that would love those same stories, but might feel discouraged to try them because they don't have that many 5 stars.
SO: if you want to give it a try, Readerly is completely free - as are the first 10,000 "premium" accounts - although you might have to join a waiting list before get to work and/or explore. My waiting period was about 3-4 days.
I also have 4 invitations left (my account is @furygale, in case you wanna check it out) if you wanna access the app and start straight away! PM me for more info!
But yeah, guys. Readers. Honestly, spare a couple of minutes to look at this, you might fall in love too *-*