I Got Tired of Goodreads. So I Built Kitaaben.com
I am Nandan, And you probably know me as a "Software Engineer who "hacked" an Airline to retrieve his luggage".
I am a full-time Software Engineer, Tech Speaker, and mentor. I enjoy talking about Web Development, Machine Learning, Natural language Processing, Machine learning Accelerated Mobile Pages, Progressive Web Apps, Cybersecurity, Chatbots, etc.
My claim to fame was when I posted a series of tweets on Twitter about data privacy issues on an airline’s website and the tweet got viral for all the good reasons. The story was covered by all major media portals all around the world including BBC, Saudi Gazette, Times of India, Boing Boing, Lallantop etc. and I have been interviewed by some major radio channels and podcasts.
In my free time, I like to indulge myself in activities like Photography, Gardening, Snooker, or Boxing. I am a proud owner of many plants, I sometimes talk to them (mostly pep talks).
I read a lot. Not as much as I'd like to, but enough that I needed a place to keep track of it all.
For years, Goodreads was that place. Then Amazon bought it in 2013 and... nothing happened. No meaningful update. No design refresh. No new features worth talking about. Just a bloated, slow, social-feed-first app that cared more about what your friends were reading than what you actually wanted from a reading tracker.
So I stopped waiting and built my own. It's called Kitaaben.
What Even Is Kitaaben?
Kitaaben is a private bookshelf tracker. That's it, honestly.
You sign in with Google, add your books, and start tracking. No followers, no public profile, no algorithm telling you what to read next. Just your books, organized the way you want them.
I built it as a React SPA, backed by Firestore for real-time sync and Google OAuth for auth. It works as a PWA too, so you can install it directly on your phone or desktop and it behaves like a native app. Even logs notes offline and syncs when you're back online.
The stack is deliberately simple. I didn't want to over-engineer a reading tracker.
The Features That Actually Matter
Reading Progress Tracking
You can log how many pages you've read, mark a book as "Reading", "To Read", or "Completed", and watch your progress bar move. Small thing, weirdly satisfying.
Yearly Reading Goals
Set a target at the start of the year. Kitaaben shows you a clean gauge of where you stand. No gamification, no streaks, no push notifications guilt-tripping you into reading. Just the number.
The AI Review Assistant
This one is my favourite. You know how you finish a book, you have all these raw thoughts, and then you sit down to write a review, and your mind goes blank?
Kitaaben fixes that. You log rough chapter notes as you read. When you're done, one click and the AI turns your messy notes into a proper, readable review. It uses Gemini under the hood, server-side, so nothing weird is happening with your data.
Beautiful Bookshelf UI
You can pick colour palettes for your book spines, attach local photos, or link directly to publisher dust jackets. Your shelf actually looks good. Goodreads shelf looks like it was designed in 2009 because it was.
Cloud Sync + Offline PWA
Everything syncs in real-time to Firestore. Works across your phone, tablet, and desktop. Add notes on a flight, they'll sync when you land.
Your Data Is Yours
No corporate sponsors. No ads. No one is analysing your reading habits to sell you something. The free tier is genuinely free, forever. If you want AI reviews and premium themes, there's an Elite plan, but the core is completely free.
Kitaaben vs Goodreads — Let's Be Honest
| Goodreads | Kitaaben | |
|---|---|---|
| Last major update | Years ago | Actively built |
| Social feed | Yes, and you can't remove it | No. Just your books. |
| Ads | Yes | Never |
| Data privacy | Amazon owns everything | Private, encrypted, yours |
| AI reviews | No | Yes |
| Offline support | No | Yes (PWA) |
| Design | Dated | Clean, warm, actually nice |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
Goodreads isn't bad because it was badly built. It's bad because it stopped being built. Amazon has no incentive to fix it. It already has 150 million users who have nowhere to go.
Kitaaben is built for readers who are tired of that and just want something that works, looks good, and doesn't treat your reading life as a data point.
Who Is It For?
Honestly? People like me.
If you read regularly and want a clean private place to track it, Kitaaben will feel like a breath of fresh air. If you rely on Goodreads mainly for its social features — seeing what friends are reading, community reviews, that sort of thing — Kitaaben isn't trying to replace that. It's not a social network. It never will be.
It's a personal reading sanctuary. That's the whole point.
Try It
kitaaben.com — Sign in with Google, takes about 60 seconds to set up.
If you have feedback, brutal or otherwise, reach me at namastay@kitaaben.com or find me on Twitter. I'm building this in the open and I actually read every message.
Thanks, Nandan
