How Do You Keep Your To Read List? Request for Assistance.

I am at the Glenview Library waiting for the next meeting of the ARRT Speculative Fiction Genre Study to begin. Today we will be doing our Science Fiction Bootcamp.

But that is not the topic of this post in any way.  I have been spending way too much time thinking about how I keep track of what I want to read. Much of this has been forced upon me because Shelfari shut down and made me switch to Goodreads.

I have nothing against Goodreads.  I use it all of the time as a resource, however the point of Goodreads is for readers to interact with each other. It’s a social media space for book lovers. What I loved about Shelfari is that it was first and foremost about the books. It was a space to keep a virtual bookshelf.  It was cumbersome to interact with other users, but that’s why I liked it. I was using it to keep track of what I had read but more importantly, what I wanted to read next.

The switch to Goodreads has been unsatisfactory for me on many fronts. For example, although Shelfari and Goodreads were the same company, when I did the approved import from Shelfari to Goodreads, my dates when I read all of my books were lost.  It now looks like I read hundreds of books this year.

Now that is only mildly annoying. I have more complaints, but my biggest one is how terrible Goodreads is for keeping my to-read list. I used to rely on Shelfari as the place where I kept my large to-read list. I put the books on a shelf virtually and regularly went back to “pull" one off the shelf and place a hold at the library. I could easily browse my shelf-- that looked like a book shelf-- and pick my next reads.

I am not enjoying using Goodreads for this. Again, I think it is because the strength of Goodreads is in the social aspect and I want it to be a place to park my lists. 

Beyond being annoying, I have noticed a HUGE problem with my lack of a reliable to-read list-- I am not reading as many backlist titles as I have in years' past. I think that is because I am relying on placing pre-pub books in my library catalog holds queue. They won’t all come at once because they are not out yet. But older titles will come right away. I don’t want that. So what is happening as a result is that I am not reading backlist titles at all.

That is not good. So now, I am ready to take action.

As you can see, I have spent far too much time thinking about this topic. I need to stop. That’s where you come in. Today, I am asking all of you, please let me know what you use to keep your to-read lists and if you like it by leaving a comment.