I have a lot of books. Seriously. A. Lot. I'm sure I wouldn't win any reality TV library hoarder contest or anything, but my husband would still probably nominate me.
When I got my Kindle last year, a friend gifted me with a flash drive with a couple THOUSAND books. Where she got them might be a don't-ask-don't-tell kind of a thing, but there are a bunch of awesome books on there, some of which I plan to read. Someday. I have the Calibre e-book management software installed on my laptop. I don't use it as effectively as I could, and my Kindle is a mess. That is the biggest drawback to the Kindle, it's a bitch to organize the stuff I have on it.
Then there are the dead-tree books. For a long time, I just recycled everything I read. I ran through books like raisin bran through a four-year-old. There is a used book store in my area that gives you a 25% credit of the cover price for paper backs, and then you can use that towards the purchase of more books, so it's a pretty ecological and economical situation.
But then, when I seriously decided to start writing, I started keeping more of the books I read. And of course, buying even more. And making little notes everywhere of things that I want to read.
Now, my little used book store is closing, and is selling everything WAY cheap. So I keep going in to buy more and more books. Series romances are 8/$1 right now...even if the books suck, that's cheaper than toilet paper, so if I get in a jam...Anyway. I now have a few hundred paperback romances piled on my bedroom floor.
I'm trying to orgnaize my lists of "Books I want to read but don't own yet", "Books I own and might read", "Books I own and definitely plan to read", "Books I've read and don't want to buy again", "Books I own and want to re-read"....and a jillion of them are electronic and alot are paper, and alot of them are post-its.
Holy crap! So not only do I need to organize my lists, I need to organize my actual books.
I looked for reviews of "book organizing software", but that was a little confusing, and then I remembered that I do have a Goodreads account...duh. I spent most of yesterday hunkered down on my bedroom floor with my laptop logged on to Goodreads, trying to get things entered, and then piled stuff according to genre and actually alphabetized some.
I've got my Harlequin Superromances, the Harlequin Intrigue, the Blaze and Temptation, Big Juicy Historicals, the Chilling Romantic Suspenses, the Secret Throbbing Back Row Behind the Self-Help Books, The Suzanne Brockmann Section, the JR Ward Black Dagger Brotherhood And Sexy Angel Pile, The Lori Foster Area...and then there's the big pile of Books that Don't Fit In a Category.
What do you use to keep track of your books? Does it work for you?
Holy macaroni, this is a problem I can *so* relate to! I'm overwhelmed at the moment, so my plan is to weed down the next five I want to read and then go about reading them. I, too, find it hard to part with books after I read them, but I'm going to have to do that soon...or buy a bigger house!
ReplyDeleteOh, man. This post makes me feel sooooo guilty about my totally disorganized book mess. My books are just...there. Everywhere. In no particular order.
ReplyDeleteNow I'm going to go stick my head in the sand, and try not to think about it. *grin*
I feel pretty good about my TBR pile, pretty good, meaning, I have no guilt over it! It's huge, The Hubs bought me a book shelf, I loaded it up, but I also got rid of a huge stack that I knew I'd never read. I haven't allowed myself a new "real" book in quite some time. Evertyhing new has been put on my Kindle. I agree, how do you organize that darn Kindle? Shoot, how do I see the covers on that darn thing? I never remember titles, just what the cover looked like.
ReplyDeleteUm...why aren't we talking about The Walking Dead today????