extract goodreads want to read list¶

you need to request an archive of your data from goodreads.com, after a day or two they'll send an email with a zip file full of zip files.

extract the activity.zip, you'll then get an activity.json file

this json file has - I guess - all your goodreads activity stored with different activity types, for example:

"activity_type": "BookStatusReading"
"activity_type": "BookStatusWantToRead"

you can use something like jq to extract the data.

list all "Want to Read" books¶

jq -r '
  [ .[]
    | select(has("activities"))
    | .activities[]
    | select(.activity_type == "BookStatusWantToRead")
    | .product
  ]
  | unique
  | sort
  | .[]
' activity.json