Fun question. I wouldn’t say I’ve solved it, but I’m doing okay. My actual lists are on-hold OF projects (but I could use anything, really)
List for my next ILL items
List for my next ebook borrows
Plus an Apple Note, so I can share it with a few people, of books I wouldn’t mind receiving as gifts (or buying myself, if I get to it)
None of these are terribly long, though. For me, 1,000 unread items is too many because either I’m doing to die or change my tastes before I get through 10% of it.
I also rely on external places for my next books, where I don’t mind what I read so much as it’s a certain calibre or category of book. Places like:
Certain shelves in a local used bookstore. I know I can visit every few months and come away with a great new book.
Knowledge of books I’ve never forgotten I want to read, years/decades later…
Plus I know I’ll receive random book recommendations from friends and family over the years or suddenly want to read up on a subject due to the news, job change, etc.
For cataloging owned and read books, this topic helped me a lot. I was really pleased with the suggestions, corrections and commentary from you all.
Hi, I use “Book Track - Bookshelf log”
It supports importing from services like Goodreads and book collections can also be exported to PDF and CSV as well.
Another plus, the app doesn’t collect any personal data.
Funny enough, I read mostly digital nowadays using Audible, Blinkist, Apple Books or Kindle. I have rarely started a book and thought to myself “have I read this before?” The tools keep good track on what I have read (and when) and haven’t failed on me once.
The main reason I use Calibre is that it gives me full control over book formats and device management.
I was a very active tracker in the analog world: books, CDs, DVDs and BluRays, most of which I do not use or own anymore. I needed my collection with me prior to shopping (especially during sales).
Re-reads in my world seem to only be intentional. More than once a Blinkist read has triggered me to actually buy/read the whole book (despite knowing the plot)
I’ve been struggling with many solutions. Until now Goodreads has always been my main system. My main pain with custom solutions has always been having to enter the book informations manually.
Obsidian however has some great workflows that make it such a joy to keep my reading list in it according to my own wishes. The workflow is explained here: https://github.com/Elaws/script_googleBooks_quickAdd
In short:
Create a template according to your own wishes (I for example love noting where a book got recommended and why it appealed to me)
Set up the quickadd plugin to automatically pull book information from Google Books into your own template
Set up a dataview table to show your reading/read lists in a beautiful table
@Atom mentioned the app Book Track above. I recently started to use it as well, I think it’s a good solution across iOS and Mac OS. Your data stays with you and not on someone else’s server like Goodreads. The ISBN scanner is quite handy to import books. The app is relatively new but the developer seems pretty responsive.
I’m just reading through all the replies and pondering things, but this comment made me chuckle. It is the evergreen quandary with books. So many titles, so little time!
(Sidenote, my Pocket currently has over 5000 unread items in it and I calculated that even if I read 10 articles a day it would take me over a year to clear it. I’m on the verge of just declaring Pocket bankruptcy instead )
I tested Obsidian last week and decided I didn’t need it in my life (I’m quite happy playing in DevonThink), but your delightful screengrab of your book vault makes me think I was too hasty…
Well… I have my kindle books in 2 places. I use calibre to de-DRM all kindle books that have DRM, as a backup. I read them all on iPad. I currently use BookPedia to track all owned Kindle and paper books and one of the things is data on to be read or when I last read the book.
It does end up being basically a list with tags that allow sorting so may not work for you. OTOH the total library in Bookpedia as of the end of 2021 was over 3100 books and the to be read list at that time was at just under 600. I haven’t updated Bookpedia in a while, it’s a bit fiddly to do. So I have both all the books I’ve read to far this year and all the new books I have added that need to be either entered or updated.
I’m looking at some way to combine the list of books read, with my annoations (quotes and personal notes) and the books read or to be read into my Obsidian vault. Playing with both Readwise plugin (fails because it can’t handle anything but Amazon purchased books and a subscription) and the Kindle Plug-in, (same restriction on only Amazon purchases books but at least no subscription) and Zotero (wich has good links into Obsidian via Citations and other plug-ins but fiddly to get all )
I didn’t even know this was possible!! All my software is up to date so looking at Calibre’s website I’d have problems with this, but it’s a tantalising window into a way to get my books out of Kindle. I HATE DRM on books (and I worked in a bookshop as a student!). Once I’ve purchased a book, it should be mine to play with as I like. If I want to stick it in a random folder in one of my apps, that should be my choice. In an attempt to reduce some of the friction with Kindle here, I am diligent about downloading all my highlights (I copy them to my PKM system, DevonThink, as Markdown) and I lean towards excessive highlighting in Kindle, more so than with other books, just so that anything of interest is captured and usable in other formats.
All my software is up to date so looking at Calibre’s website I’d have problems with this, but it’s a tantalising window into a way to get my books out of Kindle. I HATE DRM on books (and I worked in a bookshop as a student!). Once I’ve purchased a book, it should be mine to play with as I like. If I want to stick it in a random folder in one of my apps, that should be my choice. In an attempt to reduce some of the friction with Kindle here, I am diligent about downloading all my highlights (I copy them to my PKM system, DevonThink, as Markdown) and I lean towards excessive highlighting in Kindle, more so than with other books, just so that anything of interest is captured and usable in other formats.