In my experience, voracious readers develop systems to keep track of their reading lives – what they have read and what they hope to read. I have tried many different systems over the years to keep track. Some have worked well and others have been busywork but not very helpful. Here are the systems I am using today to keep track of my reading life.
READING NOTEBOOK – My first tool is a reading notebook. I have been keeping one since 2007, so I have a lot of material to go back through when I am feeling nostalgic or if I want to check on a book I read ages ago. Initially I wrote detailed reviews in these notebooks, but now I generally note a rating, age level/format (picture book, middle grade, adult), genre (mystery, scifi, dystopian, nonfiction), source (TBR, library, ARC) and any red flags that might matter if I recommend this to someone (alternate lifestyle, language, trigger warnings, etc.). This notebook allows me to track my reading stats for the year, track progress on reading challenges, etc.
PHONE: Another tool I use all the time is my phone. I use it to take screenshots of books I read about online (like this one from Twitter) so I can go back and look it up at another time. Since I want to buy 10x more books than I can at any given time, I also take pictures of titles at the book store so I can remember them later.
TRACKING NOTEBOOKS – I adore writing things down, and in order to keep track of all the things I write, I use various notebooks. These three get used the most for my reading life. One I use for writing up reviews for the blog. I feel like my posts are much better when I write them fresh after finishing the book. If I try to do it a couple days later, the reviews feel flat and repetitive. I use another for setting up my Monday BOOK NEWS posts about upcoming books. The third is where I transcribe all the titles from the pictures on my phone. Then I can regularly clean off the photos and clear up space on my phone. The titles are saved until I do a batch of research on them every few weeks.
NOTECARDS – Lately I am a 4×6 notecard fiend. I use them for everything! These sets here are part of my ongoing tracking system. One set tracks the days I have scheduled my reviews. This helps me when I need to move things around to accommodate a new ARC in the schedule so I can post my review as close to release day as possible. Another set includes one card for each ARC so I can keep track of where it is (kindle, computer), when the book releases, when the ARC is archived, and when I post various reviews. Before I started this, I would send a book to my Kindle and I would forget about it. It would sit there, unread, until it was archived. This system is helping me stay on track. When I finish reading those books, they move to a second stack where I track them until all of the reviews have been posted (some sites let you post reviews early and others make you wait until release day). I have another stack for books I want to request from the library. I can only request three e-books per day, and I often have 2-3 times that after a strong BOOK NEWS week. This is where I jot the titles down so when I am ready to request a few more books, I know which ones were top of my list.
GOODREADS: Goodreads is a great place for me to track books I would like to read someday. I don’t do as much with my to-read list as I do with my notecards, but Goodreads will flag things for me based on what’s on my lists, so I try to keep up with it.
BOOK CRAWLER – This is the app I use to keep track of books as I buy them. I keep up with this probably 80% of the time. My hope is that this will keep me from buying a book more than once, but that still happens now and then. I’m not as good about deleting books off of the app when I get rid of them. When it comes down to a couple free hours when I can do that, I usually decide to read instead.
PAPERLESS – Paperless is a list-making app that we use for everything from tracking what we need from the store to the list of errands for the day or what TV seasons we have on DVD. I used to use Paperless – or Evernote – to track all of my upcoming releases. Then, when I bought something, I would just check it off. Now that I am not teaching, and therefore not buying books as often, it was simpler to go to this system where each month is one checklisted item. Inside that item I can list the books I want to buy that month. Now that my local bookstore has stopped setting new releases off in their own section, I needed a place to track authors, too, along with the titles, so having this list is much easier than relying on my brain. I can sometimes forget to update this, but when I know I am heading to the bookstore soon, I am quick to check in and make sure I have all the titles I want to check out.
So, how about you? How do you keep track of your reading life?