How to Analyze Your Letterboxd and Goodreads CSV Exports
Both Letterboxd and Goodreads hand you a full CSV of everything you have logged. That is enough to build your own year in review: how much you watched or read, how you rate, which decades and creators you keep coming back to. This guide walks through the export and the analysis.
Bottom line: Export the CSV, clean the headers and dates, derive month and decade columns, then group, count, and chart by rating, month, decade, and creator, all in your browser.
Step 1: Export Your Data
Letterboxd: Settings > Import & Export > Export Your Data (a ZIP of several CSVs). Goodreads: My Books > Import and Export > Export Library (one CSV). Unzip if needed and pick the file that has your ratings and dates.
Step 2: Clean Headers and Dates
Run an auto-fix pass, then force the date column you care about to YYYY-MM-DD. Goodreads in particular pads text fields and quotes inconsistently, so a structural cleanup first saves headaches.
Step 3: Derive Grouping Columns
Add a month column from the date and a decade column from the release or publication year. These two derived columns power almost every chart you will want.
Step 4: Group, Count, and Chart
- Ratings distribution: group by your rating, count rows, chart as a bar.
- Pace: count films or books per month across the year.
- Taste by era: count by decade of release or publication.
- Top creators: group by director or author and sort by count.
It All Stays Local
Your viewing and reading history is personal. How To CSV processes the CSV entirely in your browser, with no upload and no storage, so the analysis never leaves your device.
Doing This in How To CSV
- Auto Fix for structural cleanup (Step 2)
- Datetime Reformat to standardize dates (Step 2)
- Group By for ratings, months, decades, and creators (Step 4)
- Statistics for your average rating and its trend (Step 4)
- Charts to visualize the breakdowns (Step 4)
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I export my data from Letterboxd and Goodreads?
Letterboxd: Settings > Import & Export > Export Your Data gives a ZIP containing diary.csv, ratings.csv, watched.csv, and more. Goodreads: My Books > Import and Export > Export Library produces one CSV of every book with your rating, shelves, and dates.
What can I actually learn from these files?
Your ratings distribution (are you a generous rater?), viewing or reading pace by month, which decades and genres you gravitate to, most-watched directors or most-read authors, and how your average rating has shifted year over year.
The date columns are inconsistent. How do I handle that?
Letterboxd uses watched date and diary date; Goodreads uses date read and date added. Pick the one that answers your question, force it to YYYY-MM-DD, then derive a month or year column to group by.
Do I need an account or an upload to do this?
No. After the export, the CSV is analyzed entirely in your browser with How To CSV. Nothing is uploaded, nothing is stored, and no sign-in is required.
Build your year in review
Load your Letterboxd or Goodreads CSV and chart your ratings, pace, and favorite decades, entirely in your browser.
Open the Charts ToolTurn this into a saved workflow
Create a free account to save the steps from this guide as a reusable workflow and re-run it on any file, from any device.
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