How I track my reading

Historic past, recent past and present-future

Hi Stackers,

This post is a bit of an oddball, like me. Those of you who know me IRL know I’m a nerd and those of you who don’t probably suspect. But let me remove all delusions and let my nerd flag fly.

I’ve tracked my reading most of my life; before Goodreads was bought by Amazon - before Goodreads or even Amazon existed. Originally, as a tween, I handwrote a list of titles, authors and dates into a notebook (I believe it was spiral-bound, probably a chunky 3-subject notebook).

I’ve always been a voracious reader, so before too long (I was still in my teens), I created an Excel database *just* for tracking my reading. And for decades, I was kinda low-key and embarrassed about it. It seemed like something weird about me that no one would get.

Once I worked at a bookstore and after the 10-digit ISBN switched to a 13-digit code, I started tracking the ISBNs of the books I read. At some point, I started keeping track of the number of pages because I was curious to know how many pages and total books I read in a year.

At the recommendation of a friend, I started tracking what I watched, the non-book things I read like essays or articles. Once I started reading comic book issues and listening to audiobooks, the page number column of my database was hit-or-miss.

Since 2020, I’ve struggled to track *all* of the media I engage with the way I have for almost my whole life and frankly, it kind of stresses me out as my memory has gotten worse and worse. Which issue of that comic series did I last read? Did I read that cheesy romance book in a different format/with a different cover?

Switching from a PC to a Mac circa 2020 also changed the accessibility of my very old, very large Excel file.

I’m sporadic with my Goodreads updates, though trying to be more consistent. I joined in 2008, 5 years before it was bought by Amazon and several of my friends are still there, plus it has almost 20 years (!!!!) of my reading data, including books I want to read. I’m interested in dis-investing from the broligarchs like Amazon’s Bezos, so I was thrilled to learn there’s an alternative founded by a Black woman - StoryGraph. I’ve started a profile there if you want to friend me - you can import data from Goodreads, which I’m waiting to do for a bit.

So, in addition to trying to update my Goodreads more regularly with what I’m reading and what I’ve finished, including some reviews, I also re-tooled my personal tracking method, adding a column I call “genre, tropes and triggers notes” in the hope that this will help me remember when I’m recommending or writing about books.

Here’s a screenshot of the books I’ve read so far in February (there’s a little of everything and a few trends - i.e. at least 2 Canadian authors!):

Do you track your reading? Where? Why? I’m so curious! Tell me more in the comments.

And one last book-related thingie. Gretchen Rubin, a self-help author, recently partnered with Bookshop.org to create a quiz that will generate a “personal ad” for novel recommendations. You can take the quiz on Rubin’s website - it’s cute and lighthearted. Here’s my book personal ad - let me know if you have any recommendations for me.