Goodreads: organising my life one step at a time.

Admittedly, only the parts that least need organising. :D

At any rate, I am now signed up at Goodreads: find me here if you're interested! I'm still trying to work out how to make the site useful to me (is it just me, or is it rather difficult to get places? Maybe LJ has spoilt me), and I have a 200+ book backlog of books to review, and a backlog of probably a thousand just to list (downside of being a prolific lifelong reader!) if I intend to do that, not to mention needing to decide whether to bother listing those I did not enjoy at all.

Once all that's done, then I can start wrestling with the site and seeing how to make it useful! Because so far, aside from using the "Shelf" feature as a primitive sort of tagging sytem, I'm really not finding it useful -- surely there should be a way to order the books, beyond "added to list" date? Plus there must be some way to see my reviews of things without hunting the book down, clicking on it, and (eventually, once it's been up a while) scrolling through all the newer reviews till I reach mine?

All tips appreciated; also any reminders of things I've forgotten to list, things you think I should put on the "to be read" list, or explanations of whom I should add to my "flist".

Or, y'know, dire threats aimed at getting me out of virtual book-organising and back to the giant pile of unfolded laundry that has been living on my bed for the last week and a half. *rueful look* (In case you don't know already, I am pants at organising anything that matters, reserving my talents for the alphabetising of CDs and things like virtual bookshelves. I totally fail at any kind of real-life organisation.)

Camera cable still missing! Starting to get worried. Must excavate laundry pile tomorrow, in case it's underneath it somehow...

Actual real-life organisation!

Today I started a serious organising project: (my room!)



In the spirit of 3W4DW, comments are turned off on LJ, but you can easily comment on DW via Open ID; just follow the fake cut!

Goodreads: so far, there has been frustration.

So far I am finding Goodreads.com frustrating. It's not what I was really hoping for -- far too simple, but the layout is as difficult as the site is simplistic: still no way to place all my reviews on one page, still no way to, I dunno, be notified when a book by Author X is released? Definitely no way to move things from "read" to "reading" to "read" in a way that would keep a tally -- it would be really fascinating to see how many times I reread books, and which ones get the most rereads. (Obviously, a way to enter a ballpark figure for any book added would also be helpful, since I have reread most of my books in the years I have owned them. But even starting everything from "once" would be okay.)

Still no way to reorder the books on the list; they're all jumbled together in a pile based solely on when I added them, and I haven't found any way to sort them by series or whatever. (Perhaps I could assign imaginary "Finished Reading This" dates to them, and sort them that way? Can I set it to always show that way, or would I have to reorder it every time I logged in? Must experiment...)

Some sort of "make notes about this" option would be nice, too -- because a lot of what I want to remember about the books I read isn't the sort of thing one puts in a review, which will be read by others and has to concern itself with spoilers, basic mechanical/plot issues, and other very basic details. What I want is a way to remind myself that X and Y in this book reminded me of the relationship between D and E in another book; that it has hints of Kink A; that the [SPOILER] really fell flat and I am not to buy the sequel. These are things that other readers don't want to know (personal kinks or purchasing notes) or don't need to know (spoilers, my specific emotional reactions to random stuff), but I'd like to keep track of.

People of my flist who track their reading online, what do you use? What sorts of info do you really want recorded? (Maybe I'm just insanely organised in ways no other person wants?)

Conclusion: too much social networking, not enough recordkeeping. Overall disappointing. (Oh, and it's not even easy to use social networking -- the hoops I had to jump through, just to add a few authors to my "favourite author" list! Egad.)

Actual real-life organisation!

Today I started a serious organising project: my room! Bed is now much taller, milk crates have become a neat row of under-bed storage, miscellany has been boxed up for storage, books I have no interest in seeing again have been packed for transport to the used bookstore, art supplies have been condensed, laundry has been (mostly) sorted, and the pile for Goodwill has grown a bit.

Tomorrow: find the fourth milk crate, shuffle stuff on the tall shelf, find a spot for the bookpile on the dresser, finish the laundry, and work on a couple of art projects that need wrapping up, so they can be cleared away. Then SWEEP THE FLOOR, because the dustbunnies are all too easy to mistake for water buffaloes!

Along with things like "volunteer" and "take Goodwill things to Goodwill" and "cook food before it goes bad" and "call the auto repair place". Oh, and "pick day for used bookstore trip" -- but that one's fun! :D