If you have ever wanted to track your reading for the year this is the blog for you. If you ever wanted to make a TBR list this is the blog for you. Even if you wanted to create a card catalog for your library, I'm here for it. Let's dive in.
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Today I will explain how to do three things: making a card catalog for your personal library, making a TBR (to be read) list, and tracking your reading for the year. I personally use Excel for all three, but I will add some other options in case you don't want to use that. It is also a viable option to open a notebook and handwrite your personal logs. You can access them offline if the power goes out when something doesn't depend on your battery life and technology.
Card Cataloging Your Library
The first thing you need is time. Take a day and do this. Plug in some lofi or play some Pandora while you sit and log your book collection. Depending on whether you have one bookshelf or five, it may take all day. After you have the time to sit, stand, or walk around doing this, your next step is to take an Excel document and put in several columns.
The first column down is going to be the title of the book, the next is the author, and the next is what form of book it is (audio, physical, ebook...). I personally mark what app it is on (kindle, kobo, chirp...) for easier finding. When you get all this down (pull up that lofi and take your time) go ahead and mark what you've read and haven't read if you'd like to keep track of that for the future. You can even put the unread in their own category on another page. I took the master list of all the books and created individual pages for the form of book (physical, chirp, kindle, kobo) for easier tracking of what I have and don't have. Organize it by whatever category you want to (mine's by title alphabetically). Mark your master list "master list" and mark your categories as what they are on the tabs of the Excel sheet. You can arrange them by author, genre, or any category you choose. Do what works best for your tastes.
Alternatives to this include actually buying a barcode scanner and scanning books into a program. You can organize it from there. The only downside is buying the scanner itself and then the books that don't have a barcode. For more on this method, click here.
To Be Read (TBR)
Step one is estimating how much you read last year, or last month (depending on whether you TBR for the month or year). Don't bite off more than you can chew. All the same, if you do put too much expectation on yourself you can cut it down to a handle-able list later on. Keep in mind that longer books take longer to finish and heavy topics take longer to digest. You might want pallet cleansers (light reading) in the mix around heavy content. Take into account how much time you have to read in your daily life before putting ten thousand books on your month or year TBR. Holidays also take up the reading time you have. Make the list smaller around the major holidays, or not. Up to you.
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Now, I pull up Excel again, but you can literally pull up a notebook, Word document, or notetaking app to make your list. Make it a checklist if you want. Literally, the sky is the limit. Again, though, manually written notebooks are immune to the power going out. On the other hand, you can pull it up on your devices easier from apps and online clouds.
On whatever you choose to use, write out the books you plan to read. In my case, I mark when I started reading in Excel and when I finished it. I am tracking how many I decide to abandon, finish, and start.
Tracking Reading
Why track how much you read in a year? In my case, my coworkers actually asked. I didn't know so I'm tracking my 2023 reading and will track every year onward. So far I've got about 23 books read and one book I chose not to finish (Game of Thrones was wrecking me). Maybe you want to know how much of one genre you read or make stats of your yearly reading. Up to you. Track what you want to track.
I used an Excel sheet, but you can pull out a notebook or note-taking app. Just like my TBR, I track how many I finish, but I also track what form of book I read. I put the title in one column, then three after that in whatever order you choose - finished, started, DNF (did not finish). The last column is the form of the book it is. I keep a few cells of the Excel devoted to keeping track of the overall number of the finished, started, DNFed, and what forms of book I read. I keep track of how many audiobooks, ebooks, and physical books I read in a year. This is an audiobook year for me, according to my data.
Other things you can keep track of are genre and whether you borrowed or owned the book you read. At the end of the year I'm probably going to post my stats on my blog for everyone to see. I'm doing well on my TBR and will probably go the whole way with it, adding more books to the list as I finish books.
Goodreads is also a good way to track your reading, which many people use all the time. I have an account but don't often go onto it. Storygraph, Italic Type, Bookshelf, and Bookly are also great options for you to explore. More on those here if you're interested.
Benefits of Tracking, TBRing, Cataloging
The benefits of tracking your reading are many. For one thing, you know you read a book last year by just checking your logs. In my case, I can now tell my coworker how many books I read in a year. It encourages reading to try to rack up the number on my reading log. The TBR does the same thing. If tracking genre or book form is your goal, you may find the genre/form of book you love the most by looking at your end-of-year reading stats, which helps you know what you like. You can even find biases within your reading log stats, towards a certain genre, author gender, or form of book.
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| Courtesy of Pinterest |
Why catalog your books? Easy, to know what you have and what you don't, and remember how many digital books and audiobooks you have. You don't buy duplicates this way. Your relatives are less likely to give you duplicates because you asked for a book you already had. By keeping an unread list I can now pinpoint what books I need to read when I'm not reading my bucket list series'. I'm even taking on a "read it or unhaul it" challenge every few books or so, mostly because I am a book dragon who hoards. Ask my husband and my bookshelves. They will tell you.
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Sources:
https://bookriot.com/8-reasons-catalog-books/
https://bibliolifestyle.com/best-book-tracking-apps-for-readers/
https://justplanbooks.co.uk/are-reading-logs-effective/
https://medium.com/swlh/why-you-should-start-tracking-the-books-you-read-bff0b144b4cf
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