ReadingRate · Answers · 2026
What does your reading history say about you?
On its own, a finished-books list says almost nothing — it's a record that reading happened, sorted by date. It becomes informative when it's mapped onto subjects, so you can see where you've read deeply enough to know something and where you've only dabbled. ReadingRate imports a Goodreads CSV, enriches every book with metadata it doesn't carry, and turns the result into domains with a mastery stage for each.
Most reading apps treat your history as storage. You can see that you read twenty books last year and roughly when, which tells you about your pace and nothing about you.
But a reading history is genuinely evidence about a person — it's just stored in a form that hides what it knows.
Disclosure: we make ReadingRate. This page says what the feature can't do as well as what it can.
How to turn an export into a profile
Export from Goodreads
In Goodreads, go to My Books, then Import and export, then Export library. You get a CSV of your books with your ratings and read dates.
Import it
Upload the CSV at readingrate.com/import/goodreads. Books, read dates, and ratings all come across.
Let the books be enriched
Each book is matched against the catalogue and gains what the export lacks: page and word counts, difficulty scores across nine dimensions, genre classification, and author details.
Read the domains
Your history is grouped into subjects, each with a mastery stage, so the shape of what you actually know becomes visible.
Watch instead
The import walkthrough, and why a reading history mapped onto domains of expertise beats a trophy list of covers.
Why the raw export tells you so little
A CSV of titles and dates has no notion of what those books were about, how demanding they were, or how they relate to each other. Twelve books on ancient philosophy, three novels set in Latin America, and twenty science fiction novels look identical to it — three groups of rows.
That's the difference between a list and a profile. The list is what you did; the profile is what it amounts to.
Domains and mastery stages
Grouped by subject, a history reveals concentrations you may not have noticed, and each domain gets a stage from newcomer through to more expert levels — a rough indication of whether you've encountered a field, explored it, or read enough to hold an informed view.
The thresholds are loosely modelled on the reading loads behind doctoral comprehensive exams and on stage models of skill acquisition. It's a heuristic about breadth of reading, not a credential, and shouldn't be mistaken for one.
Watching a specialism form
Serious reading tends to narrow over time in the way a degree does: a general survey first, then a period, then something quite specific. The pattern is usually invisible from inside because it happens over years.
Seeing it laid out is the genuinely useful part. It shows both where you've built real depth and where a domain sits at two books and a vague sense of familiarity — which is often the more actionable information.
This is a supplement, not a migration
Importing doesn't mean leaving anything. If your reviews, friends, and shelves live on Goodreads, they can stay there — a CSV export is a copy, not a move, and plenty of people run both.
Your library exports back out as CSV whenever you want it.
What a reading profile can't tell you
- It only knows books you logged. A history that was never recorded can't be analysed.
- It can't tell whether you understood a book, only that you read it. Twenty skimmed books outrank five studied ones.
- Domain classification depends on catalogue metadata, so obscure or self-published titles may not be placed well.
- A mastery stage is a reading-breadth heuristic, not a qualification, and it says nothing about study, practice, or work in a field.
- It measures reading, not thinking. Reading widely in a subject and having good judgement about it are related but not the same.
Import your history and see the shape of it
A Goodreads CSV becomes an enriched library and a map of what you actually know.
Related questions
- What does my Goodreads history say about me?
- By itself, little — it's a dated list of titles. Mapped onto subjects with a sense of depth per subject, it shows where you're genuinely well read and where you've only dabbled.
- How do I export my library from Goodreads?
- My Books, then Import and export, then Export library. You get a CSV including your ratings and read dates, which you can upload at readingrate.com/import/goodreads.
- Do I have to stop using Goodreads?
- No. An export is a copy, not a move. If your reviews and friends are there, keep them — many people run both and treat ReadingRate as the analytical layer.
- What is a reading domain mastery stage?
- A rough indication of how deeply you've read in a subject, from newcomer upward, based loosely on doctoral reading loads and skill-acquisition stage models. It's a heuristic about breadth of reading, not a credential.