How I Track My Reading

After my previous short essays about my reading schedule and how to remember what you read, I got a lot of questions about how I track my reading. Goodreads? Word Doc? Spreadsheet? Some other bookish platform?

Today, I’ll walk you through what I’ve been doing since 2009. It’s very simple compared to what I’ve seen other readers do, but it’s worked well for me and it’s quick/easy (which also matters).

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Using Google Sheets to Track Your Reading

I always read a ton in January. I blame the cold, gloomy weather (and the multiple books I always start over the Christmas holiday).

The secret to my reading tracker is a very simple Google spreadsheet; each year gets a new tab and that’s about it. You can see from the image above that my categories are as follows:

• “Finished” — This is the date I finished the book. At one time I also tracked start date, but it got too onerous and I just don’t really care.

• “Title” — Obvious. I don’t usually put in the subtitle simply for the sake of space-saving.

• “Author” — I do last name first, which is mostly just to help myself when trying to remember books to put together for lists or for doing any organizing in the “MASTER” sheet (more on that below). Last name first is just a little easier in that regard.

• “Gender” — I’ve only been doing this for a few years; I added it as a category when I realized that men authored an overwhelming majority of the books I’ve read. The tracking and awareness has led to a much better balance there.

• “Pages” — I love seeing how many pages I read each month and year. For non-fiction books, I’m only tracking pages of text and excluding pages of notes, indexes, etc. So the number in my spreadsheet for non-fic books is almost always different than what’s tracked by Goodreads.

• “Genre” — The broader category of the book. These are generally the types of sections you’d find at a bookstore.

• “Categories/Keywords” — Since I write about books, I use this section a ton. Whenever I’m searching for a specific book that I can’t remember the name of, when people ask me for recommendations, when I’m putting a list together around a theme . . . this section is incredibly handy.

• “Yr” — Short for “Year Published.” I put in the year it was first published (rather than the specific edition I read, which I don’t really care about). For translated books, I put the year it was first published in English.

• “Format” — The categories I use here, for no reason at all, are: hardcover, paperback, kindle, PDF, audio, and library. It could probably use some tweaking to be more accurate, but this isn’t a section I pay much attention to at the end of the year.

• “Rating” — These ratings sometimes change over time. At the end of each month I’ll go through and sort of mentally verify the impact of a book.

• “RMB” — That “x” means I’ve written about it here on Read More Books.

• “GR” — Means I’ve marked it as “Read” on Goodreads.

I do use Goodreads, but mostly for the social aspect versus using it as my primary tracker.

At the end of each month, I highlight my favorite two books, one each for fiction and non-fiction. (I haven’t done it yet for January, but it’ll be the two 5-star ratings.) Then at the end of the year, I’ll go back and evaluate those highlights and make sure they hold up.

My Google sheet has a tab for each year going back all the way to 2009, which is pretty darn fun to look at sometimes and see what I’ve read over the years.

I also keep a tab in this spreadsheet titled “MASTER,” which includes every book I’ve read since 2009. It’s a pretty simple copy/paste from the annual sheets to the master list. I do that every few months on a pretty irregular basis. I mostly use it when I’m putting together lists around a certain topic and want to do a master search of a keyword or genre.

Here’s a link to the Sheets template, if you want to copy my system as-is.

A Couple Other Things I Track

There’s just a couple other things I track in this “Books Read” spreadsheet.

• “Current” — The books I’m currently reading. I try to keep it at three (one fiction, one non-fiction, one audio), but sometimes it balloons and I have to cut my losses.

• “Feb” — This reflects the current month and lists what I hope to read in the coming weeks. It’s often a bit ambitious compared to reality, and it’s definitely subject to change, but provides a rough road map of what’s ahead. Sometimes there’s a section for the next month, too, but not often.

• “DNF” — Books I didn’t finish. I don’t care much about the details of these books, so it’s pretty loosely tracked. I’m mostly just curious what it comes to at the end of the year.

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Questions? Comments? I’d love to hear!

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-Jeremy