Comments on: I want to track books I've read and books I want to read.

Question: I want to track books I've read and books I want to read.

CwgrlUp — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 14:58:06 -0800

Where can I keep track, online, of my current list of books read/owned and books I want to read?

I'm a sci-fi/fantasy reader and I run into problems remembering where I am at in a series, especially since I use the public library whenever possible. But they usually only have the first couple books of a series and I end up needing to track down the rest. So I end up with handfuls of post-its with names of books I want to read all over the house.

I've googled my face off, on AskMe and google itself but I can't seem to find a good site for this. I would prefer something free and online. I want to keep track of books I've read/own and a list of books I want to read. Together if possible.

Save me, avid readers of MeFi! I'll be forever grateful.

By: korres

korres — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 15:03:14 -0800

How about Library Thing?

By: chorltonmeateater

chorltonmeateater — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 15:04:58 -0800

I use LibraryThing to keep track of the books I own, but it doesn't have a way of just marking a book as read, which is a bit of a pain (although it could be done inelegantly using tags). Amazon Wishlists are where books-to-read usually go.

By: griffey

griffey — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 15:06:24 -0800

LibraryThing is excellent for this sort of thing, and is free for the first 200 books. An unlimited, lifetime membership is only $25, and is well worth it if you are even remotely a book person.

By: EatTheWeak

EatTheWeak — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 15:07:10 -0800

If you're a facebooker, the iRead plug-in does pretty much exactly what you're talking about. It may also do that icky facebook data-mining thing, though.

By: clh

clh — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 15:07:45 -0800

How about shelfari? Looks like you can have a list of books you've read, books you are reading, and books you plan to read.

By: jamesonandwater

jamesonandwater — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 15:10:56 -0800

Librarything is the obvious solution, del.icio.us is another option, and the one I prefer.

By: mattbucher

mattbucher — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 15:11:09 -0800

GoodReads

By: kiltedtaco

kiltedtaco — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 15:12:40 -0800

4thing librarything. They're working on "collections", which will make it easier to catalog books you want to read, but for the moment I just use amazon's lists for that. Librarything is pretty much unbeatable for cataloging books you already own.

By: beautifulcheese

beautifulcheese — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 15:18:05 -0800

2nding GoodReads. It has three permanent shelfs of "read". "currently reading". "to read" and you can then organize by as many shelfs as you want. I've found it the easiest to use for sorting.

By: JaredSeth

JaredSeth — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 15:29:35 -0800

Do you blog? I'm using the Now Reading plugin for WordPress to track my reading, since my blog is essentially just a notepad anyway.

By: lovecrafty

lovecrafty — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 15:50:40 -0800

Thirding goodreads. Easy to use and sort through, and you can write both public reviews and/or private notes about books on your shelves (they say 'shelf' instead of 'tag').

By: The corpse in the library

The corpse in the library — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 15:58:29 -0800

You ask for "free and online," I offer "paid and on my home computer." But what the heck: I use Delicious Library, which syncs with my iPod. I can have a "shelf" of books I want to read, and that list gets transferred to my iPod. If I have my iPod with me, I have the list with me -- no need to get on to a computer when I'm out and about.

By: dzot

dzot — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 16:02:36 -0800

You could set up a couple of lists in Amazon. Free.

By: Pants!

Pants! — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 16:08:36 -0800

Yes - I do this on amazon, which is very easy.

Set up one wishlist of what you want and another of what you've read. You can move items from one list to another very easily.

By: madforplaid

madforplaid — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 18:11:10 -0800

All Consuming does this for books, music and movies.

By: i_am_a_Jedi

i_am_a_Jedi — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 21:57:47 -0800

I do it in a Tiddlywiki.

By: saturnine

saturnine — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 22:36:26 -0800

Seconding All Consuming. I've used it for 2 years now, it's intensely good at categorizing everything you've read down to the day you finish a book (or film or movie or other), plus the ability to leave notes/thoughts/reviews on the items and recommend things to others on the site.

By: TheophileEscargot

TheophileEscargot — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 01:36:05 -0800

The advantage Shelfari has over LibraryThing is that it lets you record an unlimited number of books for free: LibraryThing is limited to 200 unless you pay.

They both let you categorize books as read and unread.

LibraryThing seems to have a better user interface though.

You can fairly easily import data from one to the other by saving/loading your book list as a file.

By: schrodycat

schrodycat — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 07:53:14 -0800

I'm a bit leery of keeping such a list on sites such as Library Thing, etc. How long will they be around? Do I need to periodically export my list as a backup?

Since I'm not interested in book discussions and recommendations, I chose a different route. I keep my list as plain text on my mobile phone, which is with me nearly everywhere I go. At the library or bookstore? No problem, just pull it out of my pocket. It gets backed up regularly when I sync my phone.

Obviously your choice of phone will affect the practicality of this suggestion.

By: Deathalicious

Deathalicious — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 09:44:36 -0800

Okay, shameless self plug:

If you do use the Amazon Wishlist, you'll probably also find this useful: a Greasemonkey Script for formatting your Amazon Wishlist. Allows you to have an easy printable version as well as a version you can export to CSV.

By: mattbucher

mattbucher — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 08:35:47 -0800

Some new services:

BookBump - an iTunes-like application with tons of metadata for each title.

22Books - a book list site.