Musing Mondays - Keeping Track of your Books

Today's Musing Monday, hosted by Rebecca of Just One More Page is about keeping a record of your reading.





"Do you keep track of what and/or how many books you read? How long have you been doing this? What's your favorite tracking method, and why?If you don't keep track, why not? (question courtesy of MizB)"



Honestly, before I started this blog I did not keep a record of my books, when I read the book, the number of pages, etc. Why? Laziness would be a good excuse. I had a large amount of books and the thought would occur to me from time to time. Especially when I was working in Insurance writing policies and the number one thing we told every single person that the most important thing they need to do is keep an inventory of their personal belongings. Did I practice what I preached. No. *Gasp*

I would take pictures occasionally and figured I could use that for a record. Of course, by not keeping a record, I ended up buying duplicate copies of some books - but that is because they kept changing the covers. New cover - oh, what a lovely new book. Not!

This blog has become my way of keeping track of the books I read. Last year I took the time to enter all the books I read in 2008 into Library Thing. I even copied it over into excel. I can't imagine doing that with all my books - we have over 2000 on the shelves alone. I swear I'm going to buy the CueCat one of these days.

I was reading about MizB's idea of a journal and it looks like a good idea. A lot of work, but a good idea.

Please share with me your ideas of the best way to catalogue my books.

7 comments:

  1. My MM is up.

    I like a book journal, just to have it when I go to a bookstore or library.

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  2. Not hard for me to keep track. I read to slow. LOL!

    I use GoodReads to keep track. It's a great site. :)

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  3. My blog has helped me be consistant in keeping track of books I've read.

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  4. I keep track of my books with Goodreads but I have no idea what would work for over 2000!!! Holy moly!!!

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  5. I usually don't closely track what I read, but when I get a chance I update my reading on Good reads. Love that site.

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  6. I keep thinking about that CueCat myself!

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  7. I like keeping track of my books in an Excel worksheet - you can add as many columns of information as you want (page numbers, date of pub, date read, characters names, etc. - whatever you want).

    And so I don't make my rows huge - I use "insert comment" on the title cell and put the synopsis of the book there - it just shows up as a red triangle and when you place the mouse over the title - the synopsis pops up.

    I just started this at the beginning of 2008 - so I post the books as I read. Then when I have a few minutes to spare, I work on my backlog of books.

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