Self-hosted alternative to Goodreads. Own your reading data

The clever tradeoff here is practicality: it outsources persistence to your Airtable base so setup is minutes, not hours, and ships built-in Google Books search plus optional OpenAI recommendations so you don't need a separate recommendation stack. It delivers a usable, modern UI and a low-friction path to ownership, but the 'privacy-first' claim is only as strong as your Airtable/OpenAI choices and the free-tier record limits — worth it if you want something fast to run locally rather than inventing a new backend.