Www Goodreads Com

Goodreads Access Skill

Extract structured data from Goodreads pages including book details, author information, and Choice Awards winners.

Features

Book Page Parsing (parse_book)

Extracts comprehensive book information from any Goodreads book page:

Data Sources:

• JSON-LD structured data (standard Schema.org)
• __NEXT_DATA__ Apollo state (rich Goodreads-specific data)
• Open Graph meta tags (fallback)

Extracted Fields:

• Basic: title, title_complete, book_id, url, web_url, description, image, format, pages, language
• Authors: authors, author_urls, author_details (name, ID, URL, role)
• Ratings: rating.average, rating.count, rating.review_count
• Advanced: rating_stats.distribution (1-5 star breakdown), genres, series, awards, detailed_awards

Example:

result = await execute({
    "function": "parse_book",
    "url": "https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1"
})

# Returns:
{
    "success": True,
    "book_id": "1",
    "title": "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince",
    "title_complete": "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Harry Potter, #6)",
    "authors": ["J.K. Rowling"],
    "author_details": {
        "name": "J.K. Rowling",
        "legacy_id": 1077326,
        "url": "https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1077326",
        "role": "Author"
    },
    "rating": {"average": 4.58, "count": 3732159, "review_count": 73366},
    "rating_stats": {
        "average": 4.58,
        "ratings_count": 3732159,
        "reviews_count": 73366,
        "distribution": [20490, 39978, 246908, 877950, 2546833]
    },
    "genres": ["Fantasy", "Fiction", "Young Adult", "Harry Potter", "Magic"],
    "series": [{"title": "Harry Potter", "position": "6"}],
    "pages": 652,
    "awards": "Locus Award Best Young Adult Novel (2006), ..."
}

Author Page Parsing (parse_author)

Extracts author profile and their books:

Extracted Fields:

• name, author_id, url, canonical_url, image, description, book_count
• books: List of books with title, url, book_id, average_rating, ratings_count, cover

Example:

result = await execute({
    "function": "parse_author",
    "url": "https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1077326.J_K_Rowling"
})

# Returns:
{
    "success": True,
    "author_id": "1077326",
    "name": "J.K. Rowling",
    "description": "Although she writes under the pen name J.K. Rowling...",
    "image": "https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1596216614p8/1077326.jpg",
    "books": [
        {
            "title": "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (Harry Potter, #1)",
            "url": "https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42844155-harry-potter...",
            "book_id": "42844155",
            "average_rating": 4.47,
            "ratings_count": 11661833,
            "cover": "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed..."
        },
        ...
    ]
}

Choice Awards Parsing (parse_choice_awards)

Extracts winners from Goodreads annual Choice Awards:

Extracted Fields:

• year, title, description, logo_image
• categories: List of award categories with winners

Example:

result = await execute({
    "function": "parse_choice_awards",
    "url": "https://www.goodreads.com/choiceawards/best-books-2024"
})

# Returns:
{
    "success": True,
    "year": "2024",
    "title": "Announcing the Winners of the 2024 Goodreads Choice Awards!",
    "categories": [
        {
            "name": "Fiction",
            "winner": {
                "title": "The Wedding People",
                "image_url": "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed..."
            }
        },
        {
            "name": "Historical Fiction",
            "winner": {
                "title": "The Women",
                "image_url": "https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed..."
            }
        },
        ...
    ]
}

Data Quality

Book Pages

The skill exploits Goodreads' Next.js hydration data (__NEXT_DATA__) which contains the full Apollo GraphQL state. This provides:

• Rating distribution (exact count per star)
• Detailed award information with designation (WINNER/NOMINEE)
• Series position information
• Primary and secondary contributors with roles

For pages without this data, it gracefully falls back to JSON-LD and Open Graph meta tags.

Reliability

• HTTP-only: No browser automation required, fast and reliable
• Multiple data sources: Prioritizes the richest available data
• Error handling: Returns structured errors with descriptive messages
• Rate limiting: Consider adding delays between requests for bulk processing

Notes

1. URL format: Supports both legacy IDs (e.g., /book/show/1) and slug URLs
2. Author ID extraction: Handles both numeric IDs and slug URLs
3. Year inference: Automatically extracts year from Choice Awards URL
4. Pre-fetched HTML: Can parse provided HTML with html parameter to avoid duplicate HTTP requests

Technical Details

• Uses httpx for HTTP requests with standard browser headers
• Uses BeautifulSoup4 for HTML parsing
• No external API calls or authentication required
• All parsing is done locally on the fetched HTML