Supernatural Fiction Readers discussion

Earlier this year (as usual, without announcing it to anybody! :-( ), Goodreads apparently changed the default setting on our accounts, at the part where we specify who can send personal messages to us. Formerly, the default setting was that any Goodreader could message us, but we could limit that to our Goodreads friends. Now, all accounts are switched to the other way around; only our friends can message us, unless we go into our personal account settings and allow other members in general to do so. I only learned this through a post about it in another group.

You may not have a preference anyway, or may prefer to only allow your friends to message you; in that case, you don't need to do anything. In my case, though, there have been times when non-friends needed to ask me something, or when I needed to contact someone I'm not friends with; so in those instances, the more general setting can be an advantage. (If you change your setting, remember to click "Save" at the bottom of the page!)

Thanks for the tip, Werner.

I am the world's foremost tech-neanderthal. I went to my account settings but could not find a place to edit message preferences. Do you know where to find it?

Go to your profile and, next to your name at the top, click on the little green link that says "edit author profile." At the new page, just above your picture, click on "edit my user profile." From there, you just scroll about halfway down to reach that particular setting. Hope that helps!

Thanks Werner, appreciated.

No problem, Kit!

Deb wrote: "I went to my account settings but could not find a place to edit message preferences. Do you know where to find it?"

Deb, when I answered your question in message 3, I was writing from memory, and left out a step. After you click on "edit my user profile," you'll need to click the "Settings" tab. THEN you can scroll down to the messages setting. Sorry I didn't state that at first!

For those of you who aren't authors, your profiles are configured a bit differently. So I'm not sure where the "edit my user profile" link would be for you. Once you locate it, though, the procedure should be the same as above!

By now, some of you have probably discovered Goodreads' "new look" (which I'm quite certain no Goodreads members asked for) for book descriptions. The most notable change is to make the description pages much more cluttered (and correspondingly more of a nuisance to scroll through and navigate in), with a much greater and more aggressive emphasis on displaying cover art and links to sponsored "recommendations" and books that "Readers also enjoyed." But there's also significant loss of functionality. :-(

While you can still scroll down to read reviews of the book by your friends and others in the Goodreads community, you can no longer go directly from there to any review itself. This makes it much more difficult to read all of the comments or to comment yourself. Also, while you can still "like" a review from the description page, the program no longer shows you whether you already have done so; it just blindly displays a "like" button, even for reviews you may have already "liked" months or years ago.

Since the Amazon/Goodreads management has effectively insulated itself from any feedback by members (and would ignore it anyway), I'm not commenting to encourage that, but rather to share a workaround that may be useful to some people. If you want to go from the description's list of reviews to someone's actual review, click on his/her name or profile picture, which will take you to that person's profile page. There, bring up the person's bookshelves, and use the search function for the book title. From the result page of that search, you can go to the review itself. So it's still possible; it just now takes four steps instead of one. (The wonders of technological progress.... :-( )

Thanks for the workaround, Werner

You're welcome, Kit!

Goodreads apparently is rolling out the change gradually. Since this started, I've clicked on two book descriptions that have the "new look," and two in the old format. I'm guessing that they're not changing every description on the site at once, but instead doing it piecemeal. There are probably logistical reasons for that, but I don't know enough about computer science to speculate about them.

I do my husband's account for him, and his always comes up to the new format, which I hate. It is going to take some getting used to. I did hit the feedback button and protested, but it likely will fall on deaf ears - or maybe it would be blind eyes! Yeah, it's crazy.

The description pages used to have one-step links that would take you directly to the individual reviews; but they no longer do. That's what my workaround was intended to address.

Actually, my Goodreads friend Katherine S. has made me aware of a simpler workaround that does the same thing. On the book description pages, below each review reproduction, she writes, "Right next to "like" and "comment" there are three small dots "..." click this and you get a drop down, click 'View all Reading Activity' and it will take you to the review." I've tried this, and it works. Of course, it's two steps instead of one --but that's much better than four!

Hi all! I’m new to this group (and my love for horror/creepy). I fell in love with the genre after reading Penpal which blew my mind. Also currently reading The Girl with all the Gifts. I saw on here earlier there was a poll for what book to read this year…I voted and now I can’t find that link again. Can someone point me in the right direction? Thanks!

Tessa, glad to have you in the group; welcome! You might also want to introduce yourself on this thread: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/... .

The Polls page is here: https://www.goodreads.com/poll/list/6... . (There's also an embedded link at the top of this page, and of every other of our group's pages, along with other embedded links, such as to the group bookshelf and to the members roster.) Our current poll is the one at the top.

Thank you!