Goodreads is extremely annoying to use. It’s annoying to write interesting reviews which don’t surface compared to uninteresting reviews anyway. It’s annoying to look for books with interesting reviews and searching for anything a bit specific is completely impossible. I don’t know anyone who seriously like reading and use it.

The recommendations you would get inside a bookstore have nothing to do with this kind of experience. You are having an actual conversation about what you like and are looking for.

I tried using GoodReads and my problem was it was terrible for discovery, which is the only thing I cared about. Now it’s really just a tracker for books I read on Kindle.

Try shepherd.com, I had similar frustrations and trying to build something purely around discovery in cool and unique ways.

The incentives for the reviewers are different. On-line reviewers (often) get caught up in review-counting and status-seeking. They want to be a "Top Reviewer".

In a store the person has to go out of their way every time they recommend the same book. It's one-to-one vs. one-to-many. There's more of a chance they really do think highly of the book, maybe even years after reading it. That's valuable.