Alternatives
Products that do what Booksmania does
The smartest way to find your next read.
- 1AM
Hey HN, I know reading books isn’t everyone’s thing, but it’s certainly been mine for as long as I can remember. Unfortunately, I felt like the online book space was missing a platform that does the book community justice. Goodreads is the go-to "social platform", but if you've been on Goodreads before, you'll probably agree that it's not all that social, and overall not all that exciting. So I set out to build what I personally was looking for (but could never find). The goal: to give the book community a more social and streamlined alternative to Goodreads or StoryGraph. We also felt like…
2022 · booqsi.com
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Hi everyone, For the past couple months I've been working on a website with two main features: - https://book.sv - put in a list of books and get recommendations on what to read next from a model trained on over a billion reviews - https://book.sv/intersect - put in a list of books and find the users on Goodreads who have read them all (if you don't want to be included in these results, you can opt-out here: https://book.sv/remove-my-data) Technical info available here: https://book.sv/how-it-works Note 1: If you only provide one or two…
Nov 2025 · book.sv
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Since 2005, Goodreads has been the default book tracking site, connecting millions of readers. But let’s be real—it’s barely changed in 20 years. It’s the same site it was, just with more ads. Still no half-star ratings. No proper DNF (Did Not Finish) option. UI still looks like it's from 2005. Amazon owns it and doesn't care. So I built Kaguya, a modern alternative, over the past 9 months. What’s live: Custom shelves (Organize however you want) Rich-text reviews (format your thoughts properly) 10-star rating system (More nuance than 5 stars) DNF, On-Hold, and other reading statuses Likes,…
2025 · kaguya.io
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2017 · booknshelf.com
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I spent a lot of time going through the recent thread: Ask HN: What's the "best" book you've ever read? (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41756432) so I made this website to browse through it later and get the books I want from Amazon. It gets the comments using the HN API, uses the Open AI API to extract book names, and then the Amazon API to find the book on Amazon.
2024 · hnbestbooks.pages.dev
- 12BM
I'm releasing BestSFBooks today: http://www.bestsfbooks.com I was inspired by this HN post from a few weeks ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2978027 BestSFBooks ranks science fiction/fantasy books according to how many awards they've won or been nominated for. I included all the big ones (Hugo, Nebula, etc.) and also more obscure awards that I like such as SF Site Editor's choice. Once I had all the awards in there it was easy to start creating a New Book list based on award winning authors. I could tell the app was working as soon as I saw the two book lists on the home page.…
2011
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Personalised AI book recommendations with WOW effect! Greetings! I'm Robo Ratel, your personal AI librarian, and I'm thrilled to help you find your next amazing literary adventure! Just specify genres and/or storyline characteristic and see the exciting recommendations I've curated just for you!
2023 · whattoreadafter.xyz
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The previous submission [1] didn't catch on, so re-trying with a less substantive title! [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41680056
2024 · authorlens.com
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Find books recommended by the world’s smartest minds
May 2026 · 123reads.com
- 19HL
Hi HN! A little over two years ago, Goodreads announced they were shutting off access to their API. I was using it to show what I was reading on my blog at the time, and started looking for alternatives. I found a few that showed potential. I'd been using Letterboxd for a few years at that point and felt it had something that was missing from GR and the others I found, but I couldn't put my finger on it. I decided to build it instead (I'm sure many creators can relate ). I made a post on the /r/cofounders subreddit about the idea, and found Ste. With me as a full-stack product dev…
2023 · hardcover.app
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Hey HN! I built ProRead to solve the problem of getting stalled by walls of text in books or losing the big picture while reading. Key features: • Start from a bird's-eye view, then zoom into any level of detail • Interactive knowledge maps show how concepts connect • Seamlessly navigate between chapter summaries and original text • Ask questions in context with AI assistance • High-quality text-to-speech for any book, any level of summary • Upload any EPUB and start reading immediately We have 9 curated classics (Wealth of Nations, Crime and Punishment, etc.) ready to explore, plus you can…
2025 · proread.ai
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Hey everyone! I wanted to share a project that I've been working on the last few days that I finally finished last night: https://50books.org This is a simple site designed to track your reading list into 2015. My personal goal is to read 50 books this year, and I wanted to hold myself accountable. Major sites like Goodreads are great, but were too much of a social network for my personal taste; on the other hand, using a text file (which was my 2014 solution) was too difficult to track and share. I built https://50books.org using Sinatra, sqlite3 (via datamapper), and…
2015
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Read, track, and share books — with an AI that knows you
May 2026 · app.thefalse.net
- 24MS
Hi HN! I'm Ivan, a developer and avid reader who was constantly frustrated by the "what to read next?" problem after finishing a great book. I tried tracking books on my phone, but it felt clunky and unreliable—I worried about losing my data when switching devices. When I looked at existing online solutions, they felt overly complex and bloated for what should be a simple task. So I built MyRead: a fast, modern book tracker that's both private and persistent, running entirely in your browser. Core philosophy: your data belongs to you. Everything is stored exclusively in your browser's…
2025 · myread.space
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