I’ve been keeping track of all the books I’ve read for the past five years on a Google spreadsheet. It’s allowed me to record what I’ve read, when, and what I thought about it, not to mention other categories that aren’t tracked on reading sites like Goodreads: whether a story is self-published for instance, or if I read it for book club. Beyond those practical uses, I’ve always been drawn to analyzing my habits, reading and otherwise. I love a good pie chart as much as pie itself.
I started the spreadsheet in 2010, which seems about right: 2009 would’ve been too early, 2011 twelve months too late. My spreadsheet has columns and rows, a box for mini-reviews, and a way to color-code those books I’m currently reading. It’s organized. I can see how many books I’ve read in a given year, and how many of those were fantasy novels, self-published, or penned by women.
I’d set a goal to completely read 50 books this year, and I was trucking along.
But.
But in the past year my spreadsheet has failed me. Or I’ve failed it. Or reading and stories have been changing and these sorts of things are no longer accurate or useful.
Especially since I started reading a lot of romance, I noticed I was reading shorter books and novellas. And that was fine. Novellas are nearly book-sized. But then I started reading comics. I read the first three volumes of Saga in an entire weekend, which I tracked as all one book in my spreadsheet. But then came the single issue of Howard the Duck I thumbed through. Since it took half an hour to read, should I count it on the chart? I started beta-reading more short stories too, and I’d often group them together in threes on my chart, because together maybe they were at least novella-sized. But then others were one-offs I charted alone. They counted as separate entries on my Goodreads book challenge, which helped me at least move towards my goal.
Now, in summer 2015, I’ve either read 55 books or 28 or maybe 25.44, depending on how you count. Does it matter? Not really. But I like to chart my books, and I like to set challenges–to assure I’m reading, for pleasure and my own writing growth.
Maybe I should set a new goal: 50 different authors a year. That seems doable, and definitely more chartable.
hmm this is a tough one! First of all, I’m impressed with your organizational skills. Like, to the point of wanting to try that myself but feeling like I’d fail miserably compared to your impressiveness. 🙂
I think I’d still split each one up as a “read” then categorize by type and also by pages (think groups, as an example: under 100 pages, 100-300, 300-500, 500+). Then when you go to sort you’ll have a clear sense for where you’re at without docking “book reading credit” for comics or novellas simply because that’s what you’ve been drawn to more recently. It gives a respectful nod to your changing interests while still presenting a sorting option to recognize the “bookness” of each read if you so desire. Okay longest comment I’ve written in ages … now just watch a wordpress eats it …
I like the way you think!
The only catch is ebooks don’t have pages…or, well, those pages kind of change sometimes. But it’s worth thinking about adding a column, because columns are nice. 🙂
Glad you turned me on to tracking this way! I can see where the distinctions can get muddled, though. I count everything that could possibly fall into the book category, including comics and, this year, one thing that was really only an article but was bound like a book so it made it to the spreadsheet. 🙂 I love the idea of reading X different authors in a year!
Yeah, I think counting authors may be the way to do this, at least for now. Glad I’m not the only short reader!
You inspired me to (re)start tracking what I read this year and I’ve faced similar conundrums because I read a lot of J and YA, which leads to the question of whether it counts when a book takes me less than an hour to complete. I get around the question by including intended audience age so I can sort my list that way if I decide it’s important. (I don’t include picture books, but if I did I’d have a list of many hundreds!)
Oh my gosh, hadn’t even thought of picture books…I don’t track those either, for the same reason! Glad I’ve inspired someone 🙂