Musing Monday – My To-Be-Read List

Published on by Margaret

monday-musingToday’s MUSING MONDAYS post is about your to be read list€¦

As a follow up to last week’s question, Joseph asked how you keep track of your tbr list. Do you have a paper list or on your computer? Do you take it with you when you go shopping? How do you decide what gets added to it?

I blithely write about my “tbr read” as though it’s just a list, but it isn’t. It’s several lists, in several places.

  • For years it was just in my head.
  • Then when I found Amazon I started a Wish List on there – books I thought I wanted to own.
  • I soon found that wasn’t enough. I like online book-browsing, but it can’t beat the real thing and there were more and more books that I thought I might like but I wanted to have a proper look at them before actually buying them. So I started a Library List on Amazon, for books I might want to read and I either check them in the library or in a bookshop. Now this is much longer than my Wish List. At one point I did print it out to take with me but now I only note down a few titles when I go shopping or to the library.
  • Then when I started to read blogs I jotted down authors and titles in a notebook and the name of the blog I got it from. I took this book with me to the library or bookshop each time I went and crossed off the books whenever I read one of them. At first this was manageable but as time went on I added more and more books, even sometimes adding them more than once when I saw them reviewed on different blogs.
  • My next list is on LibraryThing. I have tagged the books I own and haven’t read “TBR” and this is very useful as I can bring up on the screen all the books on my own shelves to remind me of what I have waiting patiently to-be-read without going out and buying/borrowing any more.

Even though I have these lists the most frequently used one is the one in my head, because I often forget to take the notebook with me or to check my Amazon Library List . Recently I’ve tried to be more selective about adding books to the lists because there are already so many books on them and I’m sure there are some I’ll never get round to reading – so why add more? Of course I do, because there are always unmissable books being written that I want to read.

6 thoughts on “Musing Monday – My To-Be-Read List”

  1. I forgot that I, too, keep my lists on Library Thing, Goodreads and Shelfari, but none of those are my complete list. My complete list is still my Excel spreadsheet. For shopping, I have a little notebook with all the books I want to buy in it.

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  2. What’s really interesting is the progression. It starts from different types of technology, to paper-and-pen, back to technology, and ultimately ends with the mind serving as the very best computer. As long as this complex system works for you.

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  3. This is an area where I am still very unorganized and am getting a lot of great ideas. I love the picture in your header. Are those your bears? I love teddy bears and have a huge collection.

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  4. Yvonne – isn’t it funny how we need to have separate lists!
    Biblibio – I hadn’t thought about that progression – you’re right except my mind sometimes goes off-line.
    Nise – I love teddy bears too. I collect miniature ones. Those are just a few that sit on one of the bookshelves.

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  5. Oh, this is wonderful! I used to be able to keep a list in my head but then the list got too long. Then I kept a shoebox and filled it with scraps of paper upon which I would scribble a title. I would go through the box now and then only to discover that I’d have four or five scraps with the same title on it because I forgot that I had already heard of it and put it in the box. So I moved to a Word list but that just didn’t do it for me. So now I keep an Excel spreadsheet. There are more books on it than I will ever be able to read and I keep adding to it, but what’s a girl to do?

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