Do you track your reading?

[darkemeralds]

Hello, O Mighty Friendslist and DW Circle.

Do you track your reading? And if so, where? And (assuming you like it) what makes it work for you?

It occurs to me that, having returned to the consumption of written materials outside of fanfic, I'd like to track it (because really, the ungoogle-able life is not worth living, right?). The reading side of the social networking picture has kind of eluded me and it's high time I dipped my toes into that pool, I think.

I've heard of Goodreads and Librarything, and AllConsuming looks interesting because it includes movies, music, and other stuff. I did some googling, but I'd love some recs and thoughts on the subject from people I know.

TIA!

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

(from raindancer_jess at LJ)

I use Shelfari for mine. I like the format there.
http://www.shelfari.com/raindancer_jess

[darkemeralds]

Thanks! I hadn't come across Shelfari yet.

Your own booklist is really interesting, too!

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks! :)

[writerscramp]

I'm on Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/5218710-b-jenne. I'm sure other book tracking sites do this, also, but the GoodReads app allows me to scan the book's barcode with my phone to add it to my lists. I didn't scan my entire library, but it sure was fun enough that I could have. :)

[darkemeralds]

Ooh! Scanning barcodes does sound like fun!

Mind you, I don't read very many books involving actual paper, but still. Fun!

[starfishchick]

I use GoodReads. It's not perfect, but it works for me.
http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/106342-stephanie-seenonflickr

I did try LibraryThing but found the interface frustrating. (It may have improved, it was a few years ago that I tried it and gave up.)

[darkemeralds]

Wow! I knew you were an avid reader, but now I know how avid.

Impressive. :D

[starfishchick]

I've just recently discovered that GoodReads keeps some interesting stats... like so: http://www.goodreads.com/review/stats/106342-stephanie-seenonflickr

Also, I'm reading a book you might like: http://www.discardia.com/MoreLifeLessStuff.html - Discardia.

[darkemeralds]

Rats! Your stats link seems to be available only to members, and I don't have an account yet.

And Discardia looks like exactly my cup of tea. Thank you for the recommendation. I'm grabbing a Kindle copy right now.

[starfishchick]

Oh, that's too bad. Hang on...

[starfishchick]

And... Goodreads is currently unavailable.

I was going to try to get a screen grab so you could see it. Basically it tracks books per year, PAGES per year, you can see what you've read based on publication dates, etc.

[starfishchick]

http://twitpic.com/71ujmt

[darkemeralds]

Holy guacamole! That's a lotta books. And a very cool feature. Though the "pages" concept is a bit iffy for the likes of me, with my audiobook and ebook preferences.

Still, neato!

[starfishchick]

Yeah, I'm not sure how useful the 'pages' tracking is, unless you spent a year reading 1000+ page books and wanted to see how that stacked up against a year of reading 200-page books.

I am annoyed that I somehow haven't added all my books from 2000 onwards. I have them in my paper journal.... *unemployment project ahoy!*

[ravurian]

What do you mean by tracking? Do you mean 'keep a list', or 'make notes on' or 'grade' or 'review' or...? I don't personally, but I can see how it might be interesting to see how many books one reads in a given period, or how many one rereads, and at what intervals, and so on.

[darkemeralds]

I think my attraction to the idea is "a list--with comments--in the cloud that I can share". Otherwise I suppose I could just keep spreadsheet or something. Mostly, reading is an un-tracked area of my life and I like to track stuff.

[ranunculus]

I think it would be nice to track what I have and haven't read... Far too often I find an author that I really like and then loose them.

On the other hand, that is something else to do, and I don't need ANYTHING else to do.

[darkemeralds]

Yeah, it's a toss up, really. For me, keeping track of the details is a comfort. Kind of like a hobby--a form of relaxation. But I can sure see why it wouldn't seem like that to anyone less obsessive than I am.

[pinesandmaples]

I have a hand-coded list that I edit throughout the year and post on either the last day of the current year or the first day of the next. I also try to review everything I read on Amazon, since most of my reading is via the Top 100 Free Kindle Books and reviews matter when authors are just starting out.

Aliyah is currently deciding which book/library site will be best for her collection so we can track her ownership. (It's one of those in case of disaster moments. I'd hate to evacuate for a storm and lose her extensive French library with no record of what we lost.) I'm leaning towards one with export capacity so I can get a neat little spreadsheet at the end of the day.

[ruric]

I'm nominally on GoodReads and LibraryThing but currently there's only my non-fiction (mostly cookery books) up there. The rest will follow over the next few months!

Post-fire it's a back up system for me to know what I have and what it's worth! Luckily I already had a spreadsheet but if I can get GR/LT up to date I'll keep it all online. I also use Calibre for organising my ebooks and (aventually) fanfic.

[darkemeralds]

You make a very good point about tracking books as possessions in case of loss. Burglary and hard-disk failure have both happened to me in the days before the cloud, and I never want to lose files and data like that again!

[ruric]

What staggered me when I started totting things up is how damn much my not particularly extensive/rare books are worth.

My collection consists of several hundred paperback mostly sf/fantasy novels (which live on shevling in the attic) and then oner bookcase worth plus about 4 other shevles of (mostly) hardback books (cook books, garden design and technique books, plant reference books, herbals and some mythology and "how to write" books). Probably the most expensive single item purchased as new are my Royal Horticultural Society reference manuals which retail at about £60.

The shock for me was tracking and orking out how much they'd cost to replace. And since quite a lot of both the sf/fantasy and the garden design stuff is out of print?

It was a hell of a wake up call. My modest collection would cost somewhere in the region of about £15k to replace (in 2007 - I've added more books since then) - which is one of the reasons I'm slowly working through getting in all onto GoodReads/Library Thing and making very sure I track which items get passed on or donated to charity!

[darkemeralds]

Your post today about your more-than-one transit van effort to move back into your place suddenly springs to vivid life. All those books! Shelving alone would daunt me. You'll be one of the keepers of the flame if the power goes out and all our ebooks vanish.

[darkemeralds]

You're the second person to mention the advantage of having at least a record of a book collection in case of loss. It's a really good idea. I don't collect books as objects per se, but an online record of "stuff" seems like a very good idea for all kinds of reasons.

The only downside to Amazon reviews (as I've discovered) is that when you append a review to a particular edition of a book, and that edition is superseded by another, your review goes away--at least, that was my experience in a couple of cases.

LibraryThing

[thedarkages]

I've been a charter member of LibraryThing since 2005, when it opened, and I think it's just fantastic. It gives you complete bibliographic records for your books, has great search capability, allows you to do all kinds of statistical slicing and dicing, and has a very active online community posting on interesting topics of all kinds. Highly recommended.

Re: LibraryThing

[darkemeralds]

Thank you! Excellent recommendation.