I use Zotero for this since it is so easy to add with ISBN or even barcode scanner shortcut
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Are you usually on your Mac or on iOS when you want to update your list?
Personally I’m nearly always on iPadOS when I’m noting books, so if if my workflow was the same as yours I’d be looking at Apple Shortcuts to streamline this.
Do you have Toolbox Pro for Shortcuts? It includes a pretty nifty “Find Books” action that I started using earlier this year to help populate my book list in Drafts. With this, it’s pretty easy to create a text entry with the attributes you want. I don’t work with Obsidian much these days, but I can’t imagine it would be too difficult to set a shortcut up so that it appends text directly to a note? Otherwise you could simply output the results to the clipboard and paste wherever you want.
If you have Toolbox Pro, I’d be happy to share the shortcut I’m currently using. It’s only four steps, so nothing fancy…
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Would love to see your shortcut if you don’t mind sharing. I didn’t know toolbox pro had they feature. Never even considered checking for it.
https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/56605fad5ebb424dafd0f1c4bcd50a6d
Obvs, edit the text step and endpoint to suit your needs. I grab the book cover thumbnail for display in a Drafts menu, but you probably won’t need that or most of the other stuff I grab…
I’ve fiddled around with both Zotero and Bookends, but haven’t fully embraced either. I don’t think I’d use Zotero for my TBR list, though. First of all, I’m very intentional about what goes on the list and how it’s organized. Secondly, a book or article’s TBR entry always points to a note where I collect additional information about the book, e.g., reviews, who recommended it & why, any thoughts I might have about why I should read it or how it fits in with other things I’m reading, watching, or seeing, etc. I don’t think I could do either of these things easily or well in Zotero.
I detailed my TBR workflow in this post, if you’re interested.
Strangely I have toolboxpro, some other tool I tried needed. I paid my $$ and never used it ;-(. Now you may have given me a use.
I’m happy to use Shortcuts because that feels future proof along with working on any device. Off to play.
Cheers
Mark
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There is (surely) a better solution, but if all else fails,
- Screenshot (Cmd+Shift+4) the title and author
- Open in preview and select the text
- Paste where ever and clean up
Works on iOS too, and is better because the author’s name is above the book title with no intervening date, etc.
Edit: @WayneG suggested (then deleted) adding to a list. In a list, the title and author are next to each other, so easily selected.
Just be aware of how you will move your data out with either Zotero or Bookends; it’s possible but somewhat convoluted with both, depending on where you eant to move your data.
Noted.
I’m going to play with @jsamlarose Shortcut to see if I can make use of that.
ZoteroBib and LibraryThing are my plan B.
Trying the shortcut @jsamlarose and I get the following error:
I’m afraid my iOS shortcut skills debugging are weak ;-). My search term: "The Couple’s Guide to Thriving with ADHD
Interesting. Works fine for me, and by virtue of sharing, you should have the same settings in the shortcut that I do.
Regardless, based on the message you’re getting, it’s got nothing to do with the search term, so you’re okay there. “App Store app” is often the default variable type assigned when setting up an action with a variable in it. I’d tap on the “books” variable in the “Choose from…” step, and make sure that “book” is selected in the “type” setting…
Just found your note and the post. Strangely that thread had been on my radar due to @Bmosbacker comments around tasks.
I will give your idea some thought. I see value in focus areas, my challenge I’m interested in many things and much of it could be relevant to my professional work.
@jsamlarose I think the shortcut problem came because I first downloaded on my Mac. Assuming that ToolboxPro was already available on the MacOS.
Progress or a lack thereof.
TLDR - I’ve got a half baked version running and fear the effort it would take to do it well. Even as recovering software developer, I find Shortcuts a pain to use.
I took a whack at it this last week on my sabbatical week. It made me realize just how painful shortcuts development is in general. The lack of version control and undo/redo really gets in the way.
I got this shortcut:
Shortcuts - which relies on ToolboxPro, to the basic level with a few hours work. (Thanks @jsamlarose for the core of this shortcut). Once I had the shortcut there, I thought it would be cool if it took input from the sharesheet. I.E. I select the title of a book on a page and invoke the shortcut from the sharesheet. Except my attempts to use that as input broke the original shortcut. Since there is no easy version control I had to rebuild by borrowing parts from the original. Uggggghhhh.
The whole experience is made worse, when the shortcuts app continually tries to decide what it thinks I want. It replaced variables with what it thought I needed, expect it never was. I’m sure you’ve experienced this as well.
Other details
- The shortcut is based on my vault and file structure. If I were really sharing this I would need to make those variables. Ideally it would also us an Obsidian templating engine to create the book note and file in the variables. I don’t have the energy on the short term to figure out enough about encoding URLs to make this work.
- I suspect I should replace all punctation in shortcut with blanks or dashes would avoid Filesystem madness.
I’ve also made a trivial page:
TABLE Author FROM "Sources/BookNotes" WHERE status = "📥"
and Discarded:
TABLE Author FROM "Sources/BookNotes" WHERE status = "🗑️"
Since my BookTitle column is still called File and not “Title” - I think we can see that I don’t know much about Dataview.
Finally the Discarded section represents the idea that sometimes I get a book recommendation and it doesn’t work. (Dark Matter - Blake Crouch), I want to remember that I rejected these books so they don’t come up again.
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The best way really I have found is just to use a bibliography program. I actually do it now through DEVONthink 3 though.
I was just double entering stuff in Bookends before. I don’t need extensive formatting now, which was the main reason for me to have a special program.
I just have a Keyboard Maestro snippet that names a new text file so I know it is bibliographical and when created and then just Author Title date and a ‘comments’ or finder note with it, or really now I just put the note in the text file. I can just search or list in DEVONthink 3. It works really well. You could just have a database for bibliography too. Just do Author title etc in the text file names.
Or simply keep a few ‘lists’ in Amazon which is partly what I do really I think. Without realizing it almost you might say.
My strategy when I have to have a book is to get a sample sent to my iPad. 95% of the time I never look at it, thus saving a good bit of money (and shelf space).
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For a variety of reasons I don’t want to use Amazon.
@JohnAtl downloading a sample chapter is clever. In my case it increases the likelihood I would actually buy the book.
Your public library may have a list function, and an easy export to email.
There’s also WorldCat, a free resprce for libraries to facilitate interlibrary loans. You can search without an account, accounts are free and allow you to maintain private lists.
A webclipping of the list might be a way to move the data.
Libraries tend to have stringent user privacy and data standards.
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Fair enough: and frankly maybe that is something I should consider myself. Practice what I preach regrading the monopoly!