Every 3 weeks, I share notes on building Book DNA.
Weāre building a private, personal way to track your reading and get deeply personalized book recommendations. Think Goodreads, but for readers who want a calm, private space to track what they read, keep notes, and explore books that match their Book DNA. Like Spotify or Pandora, but for books.
Want to help shape it? Apply to be a beta tester! And a huge thank you to our 750+ members! Readers and authors can join, and more perks are coming as we grow.
I am feelingā¦
I had a good July up in the Spanish mountains. I took a break from phone calls, biked a ton, hiked a ton, and read a ton. Iām feeling pretty refreshed. The only bummer was a nasty bike crash, which hurt my knee. But after a few weeks of rest, it has recovered.
What is new in the app?
Record a read if you are not sure when you read it.
There are a lot of books Iāve read, but I canāt remember when. And our feedback from beta testers indicated this wasnāt just me š.
So, we added a new date option when you record a read:
Now, you can click āIām not sure whenā and it will record the read without a date.
Here is what it looks like after you click that:
And, you can find all these books in the Reading Log under the āUnknown datesā page.
Let me know what you think as you use it!
Date filter for reading log
Per our beta usersā request, weāve added a date filter so you can filter your reads to specific years, months, or years/months. Enjoy!
What are we working on this summer?
A better book database
This is still ongoing; we are waiting on quotes from Nielsen and Ingram.
Backstory: Right now, we use Open Library for our book data. The data is not great. We have done a fair bit of work to clean it up, but it still lacks many books. Soā¦
We are currently testing a paid book database to improve our book coverage and the quality of our book cover database. We are testing Nielsen and Ingram over the next four weeks to look at switching to them.
I wish this data were freely available, but we will likely have to pay for it š. And it is equally frustrating that Amazon doesnāt share with anyone any books published only within its ecosystem.
Goodreads & Storygraph imports
Things are going well, and I just finished a big batch of import testing with test data from Goodreads and Storygraph.
We are fixing some bugs and then going to do more testing. I am hoping to do my first tests with beta users toward the end of August, or early September.
What is going on outside of Book DNA?
We are heading out on a family vacation in a few weeks. And Iām looking forward to that :).
What am I reading now?
I just finishedā¦
A Drink Before the War by Dennis Lehane: What a great book. Iāve actually read books 1, 2, and 3 in this series and love them. The characters are fantastic, and it is a really fun bit of dark crime fiction.
I am reading...
Gone Baby Gone by Dennis Lehane: This is book #4 in the Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro series. Iām enjoying these; they have Bosch vibes and some fantastic stories and characters.
Iām looking forward to reading Whalesong soon by Miles Cameron. This is book #3 in a big Space Opera series by one of my favorite authors.
Have a good week,
Ben
P.S. From a summer biking trip in the Spanish Pyrenees mountains š
