[Metadata Source Plugin] Goodreads - Page 32

Eskoe · 02-21-2019, 04:28 PM

For some reason, having only just started recently and only for some books, when I download metadata books ISBNs or ASINs are being added as tags for books, despite not being in the customized genre list. I feel like I must have done something because it's been working perfectly until recently, but I haven't changed a thing.

Just as an example, for the "Into the Woods" by John Yorke eBook, the downloaded tags are now: "Film, PER004050, PER010050, PER011030, PER019000, Writing" where as previously it'd only have been Film and Writing.

Any idea what's happened?

davidfor · 02-21-2019, 06:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Eskoe

For some reason, having only just started recently and only for some books, when I download metadata books ISBNs or ASINs are being added as tags for books, despite not being in the customized genre list. I feel like I must have done something because it's been working perfectly until recently, but I haven't changed a thing.

Just as an example, for the "Into the Woods" by John Yorke eBook, the downloaded tags are now: "Film, PER004050, PER010050, PER011030, PER019000, Writing" where as previously it'd only have been Film and Writing.

I'm not seeing that happen here. I added a book titled "Into the Woods" with the author "John Yorke". When I downloaded the metadata, it found https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17593915 and the only tag was "Writing".

Having a quick look at the book on Goodreads, I do not see anything that looks like those codes on the pages. But, if you already with an ISBN or ASIN in the identifiers, they will be used to find the book. That will give a specific edition which can have different metadata.

But, those extra tags do not look like ISBNs or ASINs. Searching for them, they appear to be a BISAC codes. The plugin is definitely not looking for them, and unless they are in the genre list shown on the books page, they don't get added. I don't see them on the page above. Are you using other metadata sources? Or other plugins? Something like a BISAC code is more likely to come from one of the Wikidata plugins or the Library Codes plugin. I don't use either, so I don't know if they will add them.

If you don't use any of these, then I need to see the log from the metadata download. When the book selection dialog comes up, press the "View log" button and then the "Copy to clipboard" button on the next dialog. Post the full contents here for me to look at.

And, as I haven't said it for a while a more general request. When reporting an issue with any metadata source plugin, please include the URL for the book you are looking for. And if the match is wrong, then the URL or identifier for the book the plugin finds. That makes sure we are talking about the same books. And editions in this case.

jaslerx · 03-03-2019, 03:04 PM

Anyone else finding loading metadata from Goodreads going much more slowly the last week or so? I only have Goodreads metadata turned on, currently running 3.38.1 64-bit (will update to 39.1 later to see if it makes a difference)

"Found 1 results
Downloading from Goodreads took 32.5560002327"

theducks · 03-20-2019, 12:18 PM

Is any one else having problems getting Comments (synopsis) from Goodreads?
I have a number of metadata PI's enabled, but no comments show up frequently.

When I browse (I use Search the Internet:GR), it finds the book and it has the synopses (which I copy and paste to Calibre after clicking 'more').

Is this a case where Calibre collects metadata from a single source for the Ctrl-D Get metadata (I like this one, because I can choose to keep each individual field 'as is' or accept the proposal and I can edit that before accepting. )

davidfor · 03-20-2019, 10:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by theducks

Is any one else having problems getting Comments (synopsis) from Goodreads?
I have a number of metadata PI's enabled, but no comments show up frequently.

When I browse (I use Search the Internet:GR), it finds the book and it has the synopses (which I copy and paste to Calibre after clicking 'more').

Is this a case where Calibre collects metadata from a single source for the Ctrl-D Get metadata (I like this one, because I can choose to keep each individual field 'as is' or accept the proposal and I can edit that before accepting. )

I haven't noticed any problems. I just tested a few books and did get a Goodreads synopsis for all of them. Do you have any examples I can look at?

theducks · 03-20-2019, 10:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by davidfor

I haven't noticed any problems. I just tested a few books and did get a Goodreads synopsis for all of them. Do you have any examples I can look at?

Not at this time

I was just look'n and fill'n gaps I saw, not really paying attention to the titles (comes from using such good tools. Click 'search the Internet:Goodreads' and it just comes up with the book)
It has been more than 1 in the last month that Calibre (ctrl-D) did not get, and the search GR did.
(I have no idea what source Calibre DID get results from. It might be handy, if Get Metadata (the GUI in MDE, simple labled the results eg Amz,FFA,GR...). I left a number of candidates enabled, hoping for a 'hit'

davidfor · 03-20-2019, 11:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by theducks

Not at this time

I was just look'n and fill'n gaps I saw, not really paying attention to the titles (comes from using such good tools. Click 'search the Internet:Goodreads' and it just comes up with the book)
It has been more than 1 in the last month that Calibre (ctrl-D) did not get, and the search GR did.

If you do catch one, tell me and I'll look.

Quote:

(I have no idea what source Calibre DID get results from. It might be handy, if Get Metadata (the GUI in MDE, simple labled the results eg Amz,FFA,GR...). I left a number of candidates enabled, hoping for a 'hit'

I haven't looked at it properly, but, the results are merged somehow if calibre decides they are the same book. I don't know how it decides that, possibly ISBN. I also don't know how it decides which bit of metadata to use from which site.

kiwidude · 03-21-2019, 07:36 AM

I've seen a number of cases of inconsistency between the search results from the Goodreads metadata plugin and what that Goodreads Sync feature can do. It has been too long since I looked at the code in both to remember exactly what differs. But I have noticed a number of edge cases where the metadata plugin will pick the wrong book in the series (because Goodreads is returning the order of the search results incorrectly) - whereas if you use the Goodreads Sync plugin to link the book then you can manually choose the right one from the results. There were definitely a lot of cases where I thought "if it chose the first identical match rather than the first result from Goodreads" then it would get a better result.

In regards to the book descriptions - I have found that different editions on Goodreads have differing amounts of metadata. So sometimes switching edition using the Link feature will get you to one that has the metadata you want.

There is definitely room for improvement in the whole metadata process. The only sources I use are Fantastic Fiction and Goodreads. I would like an enhancement for the Edit Metadata dialog to let me choose which metadata it uses from when there are combined sources - e.g. take the description from FF but the tags from Goodreads in this particular case. It has to be a book by book decision. FF all too often has the Audio edition metadata which is annoying and the lack of control other than disabling all other metadata plugins is not ideal. I think in some cases it just decides metadata like comments based on the length (longest wins) but has been way too long since I last looked.

Of course the other thing that would be nice would be to have the metadata plugin always prioritise a "Kindle" or "ebook" edition, but that would make the plugin orders of magnitude slower. Also Goodreads data for a lot of books is very messy - there are multiple Kindle editions with varying quality of data associated with them etc.

theducks · 03-21-2019, 09:44 AM

Thanks Kiwidude,
I do not use the GRsync PI, I only wanted metadata.

on Fantastic Fiction. Their covers (size) are my standard as I have no need for the 'Photo Quality' some folk demand.
I might try reducing the number of valid sources (I disabled the ones that are not English centric as that is what I only speak)

kiwidude · 03-21-2019, 01:10 PM

Hi theducks!

Goodreads Sync plugin has one (standalone) feature called "Link to Goodreads" - which both lists Goodreads search results for a book (if it hasn't yet got a goodreads id) as well as letting you switch editions. You can also drag/drop the Goodreads book url from a browser onto that dialog as a shortcut way of setting the goodreads:xxx Id for the book.

So if someone really wants to get some quality Goodreads metadata for your book, the best way after adding a book to Calibre is to first start with the "Link to Goodreads" option (I bind it to a keyboard shortcut). Select the exact edition you want (you can open the links in your browser with double clicks from that dialog to check the data an edition has). If you then do a metadata download you are now guaranteed an exact match based on the book id, rather than the lottery of search results from a title/author search. Long winded but will avoid accidentally getting completely the wrong book metadata - I dread to think how many Calibre users blindly use "bulk metadata download" thinking how much time they will save and end up with a mess...

Yes I like FantasticFiction mainly for the series information - it gives a far more readable/clearer view of an author's works than what Goodreads does. I am a high res cover whore nowadays though

. The only downsides for me are (1) it sometimes picking the audio edition for book descriptions, (2) it has a smaller author database than Goodreads, and (3) there is a bug in the FF plugin which means if your book title has a non alphabetic character in it like an apostrophe or colon then the plugin will never return a search match. I might fix the bug one day - the workaround is to manually type the ff:somevalue id into the Edit Metadata dialog before repeating the metadata download, which is painful but works.

theducks · 03-21-2019, 01:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kiwidude

Hi theducks!

Goodreads Sync plugin has one (standalone) feature called "Link to Goodreads" - which both lists Goodreads search results for a book (if it hasn't yet got a goodreads id) as well as letting you switch editions. You can also drag/drop the Goodreads book url from a browser onto that dialog as a shortcut way of setting the goodreads:xxx Id for the book.

So if someone really wants to get some quality Goodreads metadata for your book, the best way after adding a book to Calibre is to first start with the "Link to Goodreads" option (I bind it to a keyboard shortcut). Select the exact edition you want (you can open the links in your browser with double clicks from that dialog to check the data an edition has). If you then do a metadata download you are now guaranteed an exact match based on the book id, rather than the lottery of search results from a title/author search. Long winded but will avoid accidentally getting completely the wrong book metadata - I dread to think how many Calibre users blindly use "bulk metadata download" thinking how much time they will save and end up with a mess...

Yes I like FantasticFiction mainly for the series information - it gives a far more readable/clearer view of an author's works than what Goodreads does. I am a high res cover whore nowadays though

. The only downsides for me are (1) it sometimes picking the audio edition for book descriptions, (2) it has a smaller author database than Goodreads, and (3) there is a bug in the FF plugin which means if your book title has a non alphabetic character in it like an apostrophe or colon then the plugin will never return a search match. I might fix the bug one day - the workaround is to manually type the ff:somevalue id into the Edit Metadata dialog before repeating the metadata download, which is painful but works.

I think you hit the nail on the head: No GR ID at the time of search.

, thus if sometimes fails to pull metadata.

And, I wish there was a 'no Audio book metadata option' (I have listened to a couple that were really well done, but the format does not lend itself to being interrupted (lost place, while fumbling to stop player...).

davidfor · 03-21-2019, 07:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kiwidude

Goodreads Sync plugin has one (standalone) feature called "Link to Goodreads" - which both lists Goodreads search results for a book (if it hasn't yet got a goodreads id) as well as letting you switch editions. You can also drag/drop the Goodreads book url from a browser onto that dialog as a shortcut way of setting the goodreads:xxx Id for the book.

For the record, I added something for this to the metadata editor a while ago. If you have a URL in the clipboard when you click the ISBN paste button next to the identifiers, it will try and extract an identifier and add it to the identifier list. It needs support from the metadata source plugins, but, I have added this for all the ones I maintain. It will also look at identifier rules the user has added (Preferences->Look & feel->Book details->Create rules to convert identifiers into links).

Drag&drop of the URL on the identifier field would be a good idea. As would dropping the page/URL on the metadata editor dialog and attempting to extract the metadata from that page. Yes, if the page/URL dropped can be identified as a metadata source, just do the download for that page and display the results. That would work. Maybe one day when I am bored.

Terisa de morgan · 04-07-2019, 02:54 PM

A minor glitch I've found: calibre doesn't remove goodreads id from a book using the context option in the window book, and the problem is that the URL is returning when you hover over the id in that window is Goodreads:xxxx instead of goodreads:xxxx (tested, I've changed the capital C by c and it works).

mia_corvere · 07-14-2019, 09:04 AM

Hey,

Sorry if this is in the wrong place or a dumb question. I've spent awhile trying to find an answer but have had no luck.

I like having lots of tags in my calibre library. I would like to use the goodread’s genres as tags. For instance for https://www.goodreads.com/work/shelves/58373422 I would like to blacklist stuff like ‘to-read’ and ‘2018’ but download ‘romance’ ‘high-school’ ‘contemporary’ ‘emotional’ ‘friends-to-lovers’ ‘suicide’ ‘made-me-cry’ ‘angst’ ‘tear-jerker’ ‘mental-illness.’

My issue is that I have only been able to successfully add one genre that works as a tag. I added ‘dark’ as a goodreads genre in the metadata configuration and mapped it to the calibre tag ‘dark.’ However, when I add ‘suicide’ as a genre it will not download as a tag.

I’ve spent the past couple days trying to figure out how to do this. No matter what I do, it seems as if the only genres that will download as tags are the ones that come preconfigured with the goodreads plugin. Except for ‘dark.’ I’m kind of dumb so if I’m missing something really obvious please be nice.

The ‘max number of tags to download’ is set to 99 but when I download metadata for this book the only tags I receive are ‘romance’ 'young adult’ ‘contemporary’ and ‘dark.’ I don’t recieve ‘suicide’ ‘made-me-cry’ or ‘angst’ even though I added them to the plugin in the same way I added ‘dark.’

The ideal solution would be a way to blacklist some genres (ie. ‘to-read’ ‘2019’) while downloading a set amount of the rest of the most popular genres, say the first 20. A solution without a blacklist would be totally fine though, sanitizing my library is one of my greatest joys.

I have no idea if this is even possible to do.

If anyone has any suggestions on how to do this I will love you forever.

Sorry for the awful formatting.

davidfor · 07-14-2019, 09:55 AM

I'm not sure exactly what you want. When I followed the GR link, I was expecting a book, not a list of shelves. I think I'd need to see the book that is causing the problems to have an idea of what the solution is.

Alternatively, you could look at the Goodreads Sync plugin. It can sync the shelves from GR to calibre. Or update your GR shelves from tags or other columns in calibre.

Also, there is a thread for the Goodreads metadata source plugin. The first post has info on configuration. Searching the thread might help you work out what is going on. Plus, others who use the plugin might be able to help. (I am the current maintainer, but I use it in a fairly simplistic way.)

03-03-2019, 03:04 PM	#468
jaslerx Junior Member Posts: 5 Karma: 10 Join Date: Dec 2017 Device: iPad 4 (use calibre companion & Marvin3)	Anyone else finding loading metadata from Goodreads going much more slowly the last week or so? I only have Goodreads metadata turned on, currently running 3.38.1 64-bit (will update to 39.1 later to see if it makes a difference) "Found 1 results Downloading from Goodreads took 32.5560002327" Last edited by jaslerx; 03-03-2019 at 03:07 PM.

03-21-2019, 07:36 AM	#473
kiwidude Calibre Plugins Developer Posts: 4,731 Karma: 2197770 Join Date: Oct 2010 Location: Australia Device: Kindle Oasis	I've seen a number of cases of inconsistency between the search results from the Goodreads metadata plugin and what that Goodreads Sync feature can do. It has been too long since I looked at the code in both to remember exactly what differs. But I have noticed a number of edge cases where the metadata plugin will pick the wrong book in the series (because Goodreads is returning the order of the search results incorrectly) - whereas if you use the Goodreads Sync plugin to link the book then you can manually choose the right one from the results. There were definitely a lot of cases where I thought "if it chose the first identical match rather than the first result from Goodreads" then it would get a better result. In regards to the book descriptions - I have found that different editions on Goodreads have differing amounts of metadata. So sometimes switching edition using the Link feature will get you to one that has the metadata you want. There is definitely room for improvement in the whole metadata process. The only sources I use are Fantastic Fiction and Goodreads. I would like an enhancement for the Edit Metadata dialog to let me choose which metadata it uses from when there are combined sources - e.g. take the description from FF but the tags from Goodreads in this particular case. It has to be a book by book decision. FF all too often has the Audio edition metadata which is annoying and the lack of control other than disabling all other metadata plugins is not ideal. I think in some cases it just decides metadata like comments based on the length (longest wins) but has been way too long since I last looked. Of course the other thing that would be nice would be to have the metadata plugin always prioritise a "Kindle" or "ebook" edition, but that would make the plugin orders of magnitude slower. Also Goodreads data for a lot of books is very messy - there are multiple Kindle editions with varying quality of data associated with them etc. Last edited by kiwidude; 03-21-2019 at 07:37 AM. Reason: Typos

07-14-2019, 09:04 AM	#479
mia_corvere Junior Member Posts: 3 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jul 2019 Device: PC/K3	Issue getting tags from goodreads Hey, Sorry if this is in the wrong place or a dumb question. I've spent awhile trying to find an answer but have had no luck. I like having lots of tags in my calibre library. I would like to use the goodread’s genres as tags. For instance for https://www.goodreads.com/work/shelves/58373422 I would like to blacklist stuff like ‘to-read’ and ‘2018’ but download ‘romance’ ‘high-school’ ‘contemporary’ ‘emotional’ ‘friends-to-lovers’ ‘suicide’ ‘made-me-cry’ ‘angst’ ‘tear-jerker’ ‘mental-illness.’ My issue is that I have only been able to successfully add one genre that works as a tag. I added ‘dark’ as a goodreads genre in the metadata configuration and mapped it to the calibre tag ‘dark.’ However, when I add ‘suicide’ as a genre it will not download as a tag. I’ve spent the past couple days trying to figure out how to do this. No matter what I do, it seems as if the only genres that will download as tags are the ones that come preconfigured with the goodreads plugin. Except for ‘dark.’ I’m kind of dumb so if I’m missing something really obvious please be nice. The ‘max number of tags to download’ is set to 99 but when I download metadata for this book the only tags I receive are ‘romance’ 'young adult’ ‘contemporary’ and ‘dark.’ I don’t recieve ‘suicide’ ‘made-me-cry’ or ‘angst’ even though I added them to the plugin in the same way I added ‘dark.’ The ideal solution would be a way to blacklist some genres (ie. ‘to-read’ ‘2019’) while downloading a set amount of the rest of the most popular genres, say the first 20. A solution without a blacklist would be totally fine though, sanitizing my library is one of my greatest joys. I have no idea if this is even possible to do. If anyone has any suggestions on how to do this I will love you forever. Sorry for the awful formatting.

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02-21-2019, 04:28 PM	#466
Eskoe Member Posts: 14 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jan 2011 Device: Sony Reader	For some reason, having only just started recently and only for some books, when I download metadata books ISBNs or ASINs are being added as tags for books, despite not being in the customized genre list. I feel like I must have done something because it's been working perfectly until recently, but I haven't changed a thing. Just as an example, for the "Into the Woods" by John Yorke eBook, the downloaded tags are now: "Film, PER004050, PER010050, PER011030, PER019000, Writing" where as previously it'd only have been Film and Writing. Any idea what's happened?

03-20-2019, 12:18 PM	#469
theducks Well trained by Cats Posts: 31,094 Karma: 60358908 Join Date: Aug 2009 Location: The Central Coast of California Device: Kobo Libra2,Kobo Aura2v1, K4NT(Fixed: New Bat.), Galaxy Tab A	Is any one else having problems getting Comments (synopsis) from Goodreads? I have a number of metadata PI's enabled, but no comments show up frequently. When I browse (I use Search the Internet:GR), it finds the book and it has the synopses (which I copy and paste to Calibre after clicking 'more'). Is this a case where Calibre collects metadata from a single source for the Ctrl-D Get metadata (I like this one, because I can choose to keep each individual field 'as is' or accept the proposal and I can edit that before accepting. )

03-21-2019, 09:44 AM	#474
theducks Well trained by Cats Posts: 31,094 Karma: 60358908 Join Date: Aug 2009 Location: The Central Coast of California Device: Kobo Libra2,Kobo Aura2v1, K4NT(Fixed: New Bat.), Galaxy Tab A	Thanks Kiwidude, I do not use the GRsync PI, I only wanted metadata. on Fantastic Fiction. Their covers (size) are my standard as I have no need for the 'Photo Quality' some folk demand. I might try reducing the number of valid sources (I disabled the ones that are not English centric as that is what I only speak)

03-21-2019, 01:10 PM	#475
kiwidude Calibre Plugins Developer Posts: 4,731 Karma: 2197770 Join Date: Oct 2010 Location: Australia Device: Kindle Oasis	Hi theducks! Goodreads Sync plugin has one (standalone) feature called "Link to Goodreads" - which both lists Goodreads search results for a book (if it hasn't yet got a goodreads id) as well as letting you switch editions. You can also drag/drop the Goodreads book url from a browser onto that dialog as a shortcut way of setting the goodreads:xxx Id for the book. So if someone really wants to get some quality Goodreads metadata for your book, the best way after adding a book to Calibre is to first start with the "Link to Goodreads" option (I bind it to a keyboard shortcut). Select the exact edition you want (you can open the links in your browser with double clicks from that dialog to check the data an edition has). If you then do a metadata download you are now guaranteed an exact match based on the book id, rather than the lottery of search results from a title/author search. Long winded but will avoid accidentally getting completely the wrong book metadata - I dread to think how many Calibre users blindly use "bulk metadata download" thinking how much time they will save and end up with a mess... Yes I like FantasticFiction mainly for the series information - it gives a far more readable/clearer view of an author's works than what Goodreads does. I am a high res cover whore nowadays though . The only downsides for me are (1) it sometimes picking the audio edition for book descriptions, (2) it has a smaller author database than Goodreads, and (3) there is a bug in the FF plugin which means if your book title has a non alphabetic character in it like an apostrophe or colon then the plugin will never return a search match. I might fix the bug one day - the workaround is to manually type the ff:somevalue id into the Edit Metadata dialog before repeating the metadata download, which is painful but works.

04-07-2019, 02:54 PM	#478
Terisa de morgan Grand Sorcerer Posts: 6,637 Karma: 12595249 Join Date: Jun 2009 Location: Madrid, Spain Device: Kobo Clara/Aura One/Forma,XiaoMI 5, iPad, Huawei MediaPad, YotaPhone 2	A minor glitch I've found: calibre doesn't remove goodreads id from a book using the context option in the window book, and the problem is that the URL is returning when you hover over the id in that window is Goodreads:xxxx instead of goodreads:xxxx (tested, I've changed the capital C by c and it works).

07-14-2019, 09:55 AM	#480
davidfor Grand Sorcerer Posts: 24,905 Karma: 47303824 Join Date: Jul 2011 Location: Sydney, Australia Device: Kobo:Touch,Glo, AuraH2O, GloHD,AuraONE, ClaraHD, Libra H2O; tolinoepos	I'm not sure exactly what you want. When I followed the GR link, I was expecting a book, not a list of shelves. I think I'd need to see the book that is causing the problems to have an idea of what the solution is. Alternatively, you could look at the Goodreads Sync plugin. It can sync the shelves from GR to calibre. Or update your GR shelves from tags or other columns in calibre. Also, there is a thread for the Goodreads metadata source plugin. The first post has info on configuration. Searching the thread might help you work out what is going on. Plus, others who use the plugin might be able to help. (I am the current maintainer, but I use it in a fairly simplistic way.)

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