Literal
Track your reading and discover your next favourite book
Literal is the place to keep track of what you've read and discover your next favourite book through the people you trust. It's designed around the idea that trust beats algorithms when it comes to book recommendations and that we are all trusted by someone.
Reviews for Literal
Hear what real users highlight about this tool.
Literal is praised for its minimalist and user-friendly interface, making it a preferred alternative to Goodreads. Users appreciate its ability to track reading, organize books, and discover new reads through a trusted community. The platform's open API allows for customization, such as creating widgets and browser extensions. However, some users note issues with language discrepancies and profile picture updates. While the community is strong, there's a desire for cross-platform connectivity. Overall, Literal is seen as a promising tool for book enthusiasts.
This AI-generated snapshot distills top reviewer sentiments.
I love tracking stuff, organizing things, recording accomplishments of various sorts as a way to, somehow, make them more persistent. That goes for my reading too. Way back I abandoned Goodreads because it felt outdated, cluttered, and simply bad. Literal is the opposite of Goodreads!
My reading definitely leveled up after discovering Literal - quick, clean, beautiful and easy to use. And it does exactly what I want it to - keep track of my reading, having shelves of what I want to read, and help me discover books that inspire me to read even more.
Big plus that they've got a real nice open AI, making it possible to roll your own widgets, browser extensions and what not.
I love the minimalist UI (from a browser) and it's very simple to use! Only reason why I didn't give this 5 stars is that there's discrepancies with the language (I was adding a book that I finished, but upon save the book title was in a different language) and profile picture (I added a profile picture a day after I created my account but I'm still seeing the default profile picture in some places). It also wasn't very clear to me how to add more books that I'm reading from my profile/the home page.
I joined the 2021 beta after looking for a Goodreads alternative. I mainly use this for keeping track of my reading and they have a lightweight embed widget for displaying books from your lists on a website. In early 2023 they opened up the CMS to "Librarians", select community members who want to improve the book metadata in the database. The UI is good, but I've noticed a lot of products in this category are starting to look similar. The community is good, but many of the readers I want to follow are using different apps, I find myself wishing there was a way I can subscribe to people on other platforms through something like RSS.
It's very smooth to use compared to Goodreads. However, it's unclear how it's helping us discover new books to read - the recommendation isn't as robust and when asked to recommend, it takes you to one specific book and there is no way to ask for more.
I am one of those who is still grieving over the demise of Readmill so Literal is great. Would love to see more people in it and see how it goes.
I've been using Literal as my main books tracker for about a year, and it's been amazing. An excellent Goodreads replacement, I use it weekly to ensure I track my book reading, keep up with friends reading, capture good quotes, etc. The feature set keeps growing and my shelves are always cleanly organized. Love the product and the team!
Brilliant for keeping track of the books you read and want to read as well as for discovery of new books. Also a happy user of the bookclub feature.
- easy migration from goodreads (hopefully it can sync)
- clean IA
- eye candy with strong visuals