Fans of British Writers 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!)

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.... :-( )

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!

By now, most members of this group are probably aware that Goodreads no longer e-mails us notifications of comments on discussions we've taken part in. But you may not be aware that they also no longer send those notifications to the little bell-shaped icon on your Goodreads toolbar, even if your account settings request them to. (As usual for the Goodreads management, they never bothered to notify anybody about that change.) However, there is a way to restore those toolbar notifications.

At the bottom of every discussion thread in every group, and at the bottom of every review, there is a little box that says "Notify me when people comment." If you click it, notifications of those comments will again come to your toolbar. But you have to separately click the box for every individual discussion and review for which you want to follow comments. :-( (Going forward, my suggestion is that whenever you post a new review, you click the box as soon as your review shows up on screen.)