Find Goodreads Lists Containing a Book

Purpose

Find the Goodreads lists associated with a book identified by its title or other search query, returning each list's name, URL, and visible metadata.

When to Use

Use when the caller provides a book title, author, or search query and wants the Goodreads lists containing that book. The caller does not need to know Goodreads' opaque book ID.

Workflow

1. Resolve the book ID with one direct search navigation: https://www.goodreads.com/search?q={URL-encoded query}.
2. On the search results page, inspect tr[itemtype="http://schema.org/Book"] rows and select the result whose a.bookTitle and, when supplied, a.authorName match the requested book. Read the a.bookTitle href, which typically has the form /book/show/{book-id}; extract {book-id} from that URL rather than guessing it.
3. Navigate directly to https://www.goodreads.com/list/book/{book-id}.
4. After the page is loaded, run this evaluator to extract the visible lists and pagination links:

(() => {
  const clean = (s) => (s || "").replace(/\s+/g, " ").trim();
  const lists = [...document.querySelectorAll("div.cell")]
    .map((cell) => {
      const link = cell.querySelector("a.listTitle");
      return {
        name: clean(link?.innerText),
        href: link?.href || null,
        meta: clean(cell.querySelector("div.listFullDetails")?.innerText),
      };
    })
    .filter((item) => item.name);
  const pagination = [...document.querySelectorAll("div.pagination a")]
    .map((a) => ({ label: clean(a.innerText), href: a.href }))
    .filter((item) => item.href);
  return {
    bookListsPage: location.href,
    title: clean(document.querySelector("h1")?.innerText),
    lists,
    pagination,
  };
})();

5. If pagination contains additional result-page URLs, navigate directly to those URLs and run the same evaluator, then concatenate and deduplicate results by href. Goodreads list pages also accept the query form https://www.goodreads.com/list/book/{book-id}?page={page-number}; use it when pagination controls are missing or when explicitly collecting later pages. Continue until the requested pages are covered or a page returns no list entries. In a full collection, page numbers can be fetched sequentially with the same direct URL pattern rather than clicking pagination controls.

Site-Specific Gotchas

• Goodreads uses an opaque numeric book ID in /list/book/{book-id}; always obtain it from a matching search-result book URL.
• Search results are book rows selected by tr[itemtype="http://schema.org/Book"]; use a.bookTitle for the title and a.authorName for author disambiguation.
• The lists page stores individual entries in div.cell; the list link is a.listTitle and descriptive text is in div.listFullDetails.
• Search matching should tolerate Goodreads title punctuation and case differences, but prefer an author match when multiple editions or similarly titled books appear.
• List pagination uses the page query parameter on the book-specific lists URL, even when pagination links are not readily visible in the page DOM.
• Deduplicate entries across pages by their canonical list href, because pagination results should be stitched into one collection.

Expected Output

Return the resolved book identity and an array of objects with name, href, and meta for every extracted Goodreads list, optionally including pagination URLs when more pages are available.