Find friends or interesting people to follow. Many authors are on Goodreads. For example, Donalyn Miller, also known as The Book Whisperer, is on Goodreads -- so you can follow what she reads and books she rates.
You can control what kind of updates you get, how you get them, and how frequently you get them.
Under the "Feeds" tab, you can determine what event will trigger a notification.
You can get notifications by email or by RSS feeds. The email settings can be found under
Under your Account Settings, you can determine how often you get email notifications and what will trigger a notification. Or take advantage of the RSS feed and have updates sent to your RSS reader (e.g., Feedly, Feedspot, et al -- unfortunately Google Reader is no longer available).
You can choose how often you will be updated about the Goodreads Groups you belong to, e.g., see below: