How do you keep track of what you've read?

[mvccd1000]

I usually read around 100 books per year, and I know there are some here who read even more than I do. How do you keep track of what you've read so you don't end up buying or borrowing a book only to discover on page 7 that you've read this one before?

When I began working out of the country in 2004, I started a spreadsheet so I could keep track of the books I read during my travels. I had columns for Last Name, First Name, Title, Copyright Date, Date Read, and Rating. (This way I could sort the titles of series authors into the order they were written; can you imagine trying to figure out which of Robert B. Parker's Spenser novels, or Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch books was written first if they were sorted by title?)

I'd rate each book as I read it (1-5, with 5 being the best and 1 being, "I hated it and probably didn't even finish it.&quot When it was time to order new 1-cent used paperbacks from Amazon, I'd sort by the 5s and look up additional works by those authors so I'd know I was ordering something I'd like.

I've noticed that since I got a kindle for Christmas in 2010, however, I've neglected my spreadsheet. All of the books I've downloaded on kindle show up on my Amazon account, and I can rate them there (the same as my spreadsheet; 1-5 stars). Unfortunately, it's not so easy to sort by the 5s on Amazon... I think I need to get busy and type all of those into my spreadsheet so I can sort and shop again.

My spreadsheet is currently stalled at 752, last updated in September of last year. For anyone interested, my top 10 authors for the most "5" ratings are:

Michael Connelly (19 "5s", 2 "4s", 1 "3&quot
Lee Child (10 "5s", 3 "4s", 4 "3s&quot
Harlan Coben (7 "5s", 8 "4s", 2 "3s&quot
Robert Crais (7 "5s", 6 "4s", 2 "3s&quot
Jeffery Deaver (7 "5s", 9 "4s", 3 "3s", 2 "2s&quot *
Barry Eisler (7 "5s", 1 "4&quot **
Nelson DeMille (6 "5s", 5 "4s", 3 "3s&quot
Vince Flynn (6 "5s", 5 "4s", 2 "3s&quot
Brian Haig (6 "5s", 1 "4&quot **
Marcus Wynne (5 "5s", 2 "4s&quot **

*Goes to show that even the good ones have duds; Jeffery Deaver has almost as many 2s and 3s as he does 5s.
**Eisler, Haig, and Wynn are the only ones with no duds; everything is a 4 or a 5.

[OffWithTheirHeads]

1. I use notes on my iphone. alphabetecally, by author, with dates.

[applegrove]

2. I go by the design on the book cover. In the last few years I have bought at least two books twice.

Read Snow Falling on Cedars twice in 6 years. Enjoyed it both times.

[Curmudgeoness]

6. I absolutely loved that book too.

I will have to re-read it too because it was worth every minute spent with it.

[fadedrose]

3. A list in Microsoft Works that I add to...

It's just the author's name and book title. A remark or two to help me remember story line.

Also tried putting all my books read into a Journal at DU, but it doesn't work too well because you can't condense a journal entry, or edit it, and the way it works it takes up too much space....I may keep up with it, not sure...

[raccoon]

4. For a brief while, I kept a list of what I'd read along with a brief opinion about it.

It quickly got to be too much trouble.

[Little Star]

5. I love your idea of using a spreadsheet...

I'm anal, why didn't I think of that?

I keep separate lists of books in each series I like and add to it every time I get a new release. I also keep a list of stand-alones.

I learned the hard way to keep track. I wasted so much money buying books I already owned, yikes!

I am going to make myself a spreadsheet from all my lists as soon as my life settles down. I'm going to make one for my Kindle books too.

Love, love, love the spreadsheet idea!

Thanks for sharing, LS

[dmallind]

7. nook takes care of that for me now, but for hardcopies just my habits

I don't sell or trade books other than if I disliked them so much they'll certainly stick in my memory, and I buy rather than borrow for the most part so the exceptions to that are memorable too.

[Little Star]

8. Me too, I don't sell or trade books other than if I disliked them....

I have bins full of them because I have so many that I don't part with.

I do loan them out from time to time though. I make the borrower sign them out, I'm not kidding. I want those suckers back. People think I'm nuts. They may be right but they still borrow from me, lol.

[JitterbugPerfume]

9. I don't

[Little Star]

10. Do you ever buy a book...

then start to read it and find you've already read it?

Can't tell you how many times that happened to me before I started keeping lists.

[JitterbugPerfume]

11. I admit to having two copies of some books

but if I start a list, I will forget where I put it LOL

[Little Star]

12. LOL!!! I hear ya. Been there done that.

[Broken_Hero]

13. Usually just my brain power

I don't read a ton of books a year, I think I'm probably around 20 books a year, and I usually keep them/collect them and put them on my bookshelves in my living room.

I do admit I have bought double books, thinking I didn't have it in HC and realizing that yes...in fact I all ready had it in HC.

The hardest thing I have to deal with is my comic books...I have around 500 superman comics, and I have given up buying single issues this month because I cannot remember all the ones I all ready have. I got about 50 comics in April, and I had 14 doubles....sigh, I know I need to get off my lazy ass and put all my comics on Excel...until I do that, I cannot buy back issues of Superman.

[seabeyond]

14. i was getting the same books. now i have a notebook for favorite authors and what is coming out

my kindle has catagories..... priority read, read, unread, good authors, bad authors, questionable read. lol

[pscot]

15. The key phrase in your otherwise excellent post

is "type those into my spreadsheet".

[mvccd1000]

17. Oops. :)

You don't like spreadsheets, or don't have MS Office? The only reason I like the spreadsheet is for the easy sorting; I love to be able to click on "rating" and see all of my 5s grouped together so I can go find more by those authors.

I've used the free web-based google docs, too, when I needed to share a spreadsheet with someone. That's an alternative if the lack of MS Office is the barrier to trying something like that.

[Nay]

16. I keep a limited paper list of authors that are new to me, so I can make sure I read all the books

by an author I really like. I cross them off as I finish each book.

I HAVE picked up a book, taken it home, and started reading it only to find that I had read it already. Luckily, I almost never buy fiction (neither HB nor PP), but borrow it from the library. I just take the book back the next day....

The spreadsheet idea is great, but I think I'd be too lazy to keep it up. I may have to try it, tho.

[closeupready]

18. I don't read as much or as fast as most people. So it's not hard

to track - my books are sorted on my bookshelves, between "unread" and "read". When I finish one, it simply goes on on top of the stack of other "read" books.

[Poiuyt]

19. I use Goodreads.com

It's a nice online community with different subgroups you can join depending on where your interests lie. When you list a book, you can choose the exact edition you are reading.

Librarything.com is another similar online community.

[Sisaruus]

20. Librarything

I use www.librarything.com to catalogue my books and tag (or label) them as read. If they're on my kindle, I add a tag for kindle. My lists can be found at www.librarything.com/profile/sisaruus. If I'm at a bookstore trying to recall if I have read or own a book, I can access my entire personal collection on my iPhone.

[mvccd1000]

21. Interesting

I hadn't heard of that one; I'll have to check it out.

[Little Star]

22. Thanks! I'm gonna check that out....

I like the idea of being able to access the info right in the store.

[ohheckyeah]

23. How do you rate the books on

Amazon? I know how to rate them in a review but what about for my own use? I can't find a way to do that on Amazon. I've asked them for a rating system in the "Manage your Kindle" section as well as a way to make notes.

[mvccd1000]

24. Not as easy to find...

... you used to be able to go to "My Recommendations," and in the horizontal menu bar under the section at the top was something like "Rate these items" (or similar wording). In that section, you could type in an author or title and then mark the book as one you'd read and rate it there. Lately, Amazon seems to have made changes that no longer let you search for items (so you can no longer rate a book you picked up in the library or at the used book store).

Instead, if you go to "My Recommendations" and then "Improve My Recommendations," you'll find a list of everything you've purchased. This doesn't help you create a concise rated list that you can print out or refer to, but it should at least help improve your recommendations based on the books you liked.

There are several areas where they could make improvements to the kindle; a better way to manage ratings would be one, and I've love to see the copyright dates of the books available on kindle. It can't help the "impulse purchase" market when I have to leave Amazon and go to Wikipedia or one of the book sites to find out which book in a series is next in order for me. (Often, when they do put a publication date on a kindle page, it's the date it went to kindle. All of an author's books may have dates within a month, even if they were originally published over decades.)

I've written to the kindle improvement suggestion email address... guess we'll see if that does any good.

[ohheckyeah]

25. Thank you very much for the information....

for some reason I didn't realize that was there. I still wish they would put that with the manage your kindle section but this is better than nothing, for sure.

[dimbear]

26. One of the advantages of growing older..........

You will find it makes no difference that you may have read the book before. Its events will still surprise you.




edit: dimbear cannot spell

[SheilaT]

27. I use some kind of notebook. Over the years I've had several.

Originally I just put the title and author's name and the date completed. Recently I've started writing a synopsis or review of some kind of most of them.

Periodically I'll misplace the notebook, then I have to scribble on sheets of paper and catch up when I find it.

I started this in 1976, I think, and sometimes I'll go months or a couple of years without bothering to write down what I've read, and I'll then regret it.

I read anywhere from 50-70 books per year on average.