Tips & Tricks Tuesday: Tracking what you read and want to read

Making a list of books you want to read and have read is a nice way to always have something at the ready. dillo99 shares a tip this week, laying out a nice way to keep track of everything easily—series of books, articles and websites too!

My wife and I read a lot and we often read series. Unfortunately I can’t always remember what I have read and it is especially difficult if I am looking up a series to see if anything is new. I use this system to track what I’ve read and what I want to read.

Step 1: Create a list called “Books”

Step 2: Anytime anyone suggests you read a book, add it to the list. I always enter the book as “Title, Author (Series - #).” Series is only entered if this is part of a series. So an example might be: “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Stieg Larsson (Millennium – 1).”

Step 3: After you read a book, mark it as complete. If you want to see all your read books you can just select “Completed” on the RTM interface.

Step 4: If you are reading a series, go ahead and enter the next book in the series as soon as you hear about it. Even if you don’t know the name of the book, go ahead and enter a marker for the next member of the series “(Millennium – 2)”. You can even embed a link to the author’s website so you can always easily get a status on the next book in the series. If you know the date the book comes out you can enter that as a due date and then easily check back when that date pops up. Your read list should now contain all of the series you are currently reading or plan to read.

Step 5: If you want to get fancy and you read lots of different types of stuff (articles, web sites, books, etc.) you can use the same approach but add some tags. To use that method I would create two lists – one called “Read Work” and one called “Read Pleasure”. Enter your items to read as described above but you may want to add a tag if the item is an “Article” or a “Book”. You can also set up recurring web sites that you want to visit – just enter a date and set up a recurring task at whatever frequency you want.

That’s about it! Happy Reading!

Thanks for sharing this tip, dillo99! You’re our Tips & Tricks Tuesday winner this week.

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