I empathise with your search for a better Goodreads. I used to be a "librarian" there, and the thought that I wasted my time on improving an Amazon service by adding books to their database makes me feel embarrassed. Worst of all, they actively harmed the database by using retarded bots to import garbage data (including DVDs and similar nonsense). When they realised they had imported too much garbage, they made a bot to delete some of it - but it deleted several books that I had added as well, perfectly fine data gone without any notification. Along with the shoddy redesign and long-time neglect and removal of some secondary functions, I got utterly sick of the site.

Everyone on Lemmy should give a chance to Bookwyrm. It's based on similar principles as Lemmy, decentralised and open source, a part of the Fediverse. The database is taken from the Open Library (a part of the Archive.org project). I tried it out one or two years ago, so it was my first interaction with the Fediverse in general. Sadly the database does not meet my needs, since I read a lot of obscure stuff in a few different languages. I'd have to go correct or add the data on Open Library for like every other book I've read. Way too much work, though it would be beneficial for other people too...

There are also Storygraph and LibraryThing. The latter seems closer to my tastes and needs, very old-school. But I never signed up, because I thought it's a paid service - indeed it used to be up until a few years ago, and now it's free.

So anyway I just switched to entering all the data in a LibreOffice spreadsheet (equivalent to MS Excel). One column for the title, one for the author name, etc. I'm apparently a picky reader/user, so it's probably the best solution.