Hello.
I posted the below basic question to the Goodreads help section, but so far no replies so I thought I’d try here instead.

Ok, so here goes…
I’m new to Goodreads so have very likely misunderstood some features. I am sorry if this question is misplaced. Please redirect me if need be.

My concern is so extremely basic so I am almost sure I have misunderstood what Goodreads is for:
 
So, when I have read a book, I mark it as ”read”, and so it gets moved to the shelf ”read”. This means that all my trouble of arranging books on different shelves per category was for nothing; they all eventually end up in one large pile. That’s not how a library works. The books should stay on their shelves, surely. ”Read” is the state of a book, not a place, i.e. not a shelf.

In addition, the iPhone app is very confusing: you can add shelves and tags, but a shelf cannot have the same name as a tag, which implies that they are in fact the same thing. Then they are listed as separate things, so why can't they have the same name?
 
The tags seem to stay with a book no matter which shelf I place it on, so that's good, but what are shelves used for? I am so confused. Is there somewhere that explains how to properly use Goodreads, I guess should be my all-encompassing question?
 
If you've read this far; thanks for your patience.
 
Cheers,
Anders.

For example, let's say that I want to search up history books that were released in 1998, since I personally love learning about history. Is there a way that I can specifically look up books that have the history genre on them that were published specifically in 1998 and do stuff like sort them by how many ratings they have?

My Goodreads reading challenge goal was 52 books in 2026. I read my 51st book tonight--Heartstopper, Vol. 4, a reread--and will be picking up Heartstopper, Vol. 5, another reread, tomorrow. After that, I won't be raising it, but I hope to hit 75 by the end of the year.

Given it's the halfway point of the year, how is everyone else doing on their reading goals for the year?

Just finished a book and marked it as read but it didn't seem to affect the summer challenge. It was supposed to clear "Community Picks" but it didn't. How do I fix this?

So I was looking at this page (https://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/film-history) and I noticed that in the corner, it says that it lists books 1-50 out of 2,609. So I assumed that there would be ways to look through books 51-100 and so on. But I don't know how to do it. Is there a way that I can look at the other books listed here?

Share here what you've been reading and enjoying lately. Feel free to include Goodreads links so we can add your recs to our TBR!

For me, I'm probably going to choose...

• Community Picks: Little Fires Everywhere, or maybe The Savage Detectives (the only problem with the latter is my husband is currently halfway through it and has been for 3 months and it would make sense to borrow his copy but I don't want to accidentally spoil it for him).
• Challenge Faves: Heated Rivalry. My sister has been going on and on at me to read it.
• Chart Toppers: Uuuuuugh I don't know. Nothing really jumps out. Maybe Yesteryear just because it seems like everyone is reading it?
• Staff Shelves: The Last Unicorn. It's been sitting on my shelves for a while. I remember loving the film as a kid.
• Worlds Away: The Ministry of Time. This has also been sitting on my shelves for a while.
• Fact or Fiction: Shuggie Bain. This one too.

I reserve the right to change my mind about any or all of these.

This is so frustrating. With each new round of challenges, I keep being disappointed by the lack of non-US authors. I know Goodreads is a US app, but the world is a huge place, and I think it's very narrow-minded to only showcase books written by US authors...

What do people think the two upcoming challenges will be about? The one that’s revealed on July 15 hints “it’s in the name” (could it be a mystery genre challenge even though there was one earlier this year?). And the one for Aug 1 hints “summer’s not over yet.”

I'm wondering how generous other people are. Is it just 5 stars if you liked it? Or does it have to be really really good? How picky are you? Does "quality" matter or would you rate a "trashy" romance high if you had a good time?

I personally usually rate 5 stars if it makes me laugh out loud or cry (as applicable), or if I just have a really good time. So my 5 star list is a mix of classics, fantasy, romance, litrpgs etc. It is literally an eclectic mix of whatever books I really liked. Some are really tropey and not original but I had a good time so don't care, some are objectively important groundbreaking works, and most come somewhere in the middle.

However I was talking to someone who said she didn't rate romance high even if she liked it because she only rated really important books (like Handmaid's tale or to Kill a mockingbird) high- I didn't enjoy handmaid's tale so wouldn't give it 5 stars even though I recognize it is a very important book and I would recommend reading it. It isn't 5 star for me simply because I didn't enjoy it (I would give to kill a mockingbird 5 stars though because I enjoyed it).

I have no intention of changing how I use goodreads but it made me wonder how everyone else decides what is "5 star" worthy.

So the other day I went through my Kindle and marked books that were sitting at 98% as "read" to clear out books that I was finished with. Goodreads added them all to my 2026 challenge, even though the dates I read some of them are years ago! I double checked on the website, and there's no new 2026 read date, only the original read date.

Thought it would be easy to remove them from the challenge, but when I remove them, it marks them as unread. Don't want to lose my history - Anybody got a tip to help me clean this up?

On July 1 I read "On Tyranny" and received the "July Reader" and "Challenge Faves" achievements.

On July 2 I read "Slaughterhouse Five" and received the "Page Turner" achievement but not the "Staff Shelves," where Slaughterhouse Five is a qualifying book.

Strange.

I read primarily fantasy and have noticed my fantasy recommendations have become overrun by romantasy, which I do not read. Is there a way to filter out the latter or refine my profile so I receive less romantasy book suggestions?

Does anyone know why the Summer Challenge is only running till the 14th of September and not the whole month?

so this book im currently reading got published last march, but apparently it hasn't been added to the goodreads database yet. i've got no results despite searching by isbn, title or author. i thought any book published to/available on amazon would automatically show up on goodreads as well, but turns out i was wrong (?)

i'd still like to log this book, so.. this might sound really dumb, but is there any way to do so?