I used to have a lot of physical books, two bookcases full and it was one of my biggest regrets that when we were moving house I drastically reduced this. Some were absolutely fine to let go like classic fiction, they are easily replaced by e-reader versions, my plan all along. However, the ones that bothered me were all the reference books, many of which I can’t find in either digital or physical form anymore. This post is all about organising Books And Reading without overwhelm.
On top of the physical books I still have, I also have a large collection of Kindle Books and other e-reads that are not from Amazon. Since 2009 I have used Goodreads to house my reading collection. There have been many pluses to this, the scale of the catalogue that is already there being a big one. But there has been some negatives, the biggest of which is that not all books are created equally or even have the same purpose, and sometimes you don’t want to be searching through lots of lists when you don’t have to.
So, I have had a good look around at what Apps are available and I’ve looked at recommendations from others. Having had a play around with some and I have come up with a perfect system for me and it may be great for you too, depending on the books in your collection. Of course if means my Apps and Workflow for 2025 is now a little out of date.
Physical Digital Files
Before I get around to organising my reading and other tracking there is the matter of the actual book files. A lot of them are sent straight from Amazon to my Kindle, but not all of my ebooks come from Amazon. That is where Calibre comes in. The website isn’t pretty and the tool looks dated but don’t let that put you off. It is fantastic for organising all your mobi and ePub (and many other formats I don’t use) files. Calibre is the backbone that keeps my Books And Reading library tidy across devices.
You can find and download metadata and cover images. Organise books into collections. Rate them. Even use the buy book feature and it will find the cheapest price. The convert book format feature means you can buy the book in a different format then convert it to the format of your device, then load it onto your device, either through the USB cable or remotely (I find the direct USB process the simplest by far).
I could actually use Calibre itself to do a lot of the organisation but there is a reason behind all my choices.
The Book Categories
Here’s how I split my Books And Reading into practical groups.
Colouring Books
My first set of books is the colouring books. If you are not a colourist you can skip this section. After watching this video by Colouring Bumblebee I realised that it made sense to have a stand alone app just for these books. Unlike books you read I will have dozens on the go at once and I didn’t want to clog up my reading with these.
Having checked out the App she uses, Bookshelf, I decided it was the perfect app for this category. I love all the different ways you can organise it. The Wishlist has it’s own built in system then the bookshelves can be filtered in many different ways. My standard is by percentage “read” or in this case coloured. I can tag books with WIPS (Work in Progress), Uncoloured books and Project Books (ones where I am colouring from front to back in order). I have used the Series feature to add all the books from the same illustrator and I actually went Pro so I can see how much I have spent on books and which are the most expensive etc.
Reading Books
The next set of books are those, like novels and biographies that I read in their entirety,
and they form the core of my Books And Reading workflow. For these I have settled on StoryGraph. It has some features like Goodreads, for instance a reading challenge (books in a year), there are other community challenges too.
The reading statistics are far better that Goodreads, you can easily see a summery of not just what you have read but how long you take to read a book on average, a fiction/non-fiction ratio and stats like genre and mood of the books you have read. My Genres lead with Classics, Historical and Biography. This was a bit of a surprise, If they were in places two to four it would have made sense but I really expected Contemporary fiction to take the lead. Obviously not! My mood graph is a bit of a splattering which doesn’t surprise me in the least.
As well as physical books and ebooks you can also classify audiobooks. This is perfect as I tend to listen to biographies or heavier reads (like classic fiction) on Audible while I am doing crafts like Diamond Painting or Adult Colouring.
Next Up
One of the features I really like about StoryGraph is the next up feature. My To Read list is pretty huge – see the A Big Sort Out section for Details. So having a feature where I can pin a small selection of books and jiggle around their order is really useful.
Reference Books
The other main category I have is reference books. StoryGraph has the settings:
- To Read
- Currently Reading
- Did not finish
- Read
This is perfect for the categories I am going to use the App for but it doesn’t work for Reference books, or “coffee table” books, they do not get read in one go or abandoned, they are by nature dipped into when desired or necessary, which is why my Books And Reading setup treats them differently.
For these books I have decided to use LibraryThing. I came across this app a while back using it’s Melvil Decimal System (MDS) to classify some books. Colouring Chemist on YouTube actually uses this App to organise her Colouring Books, but I can’t remember which video she discusses it in.
LibraryThing is a great match for handling a large amount of books and as I like to save in a Wishlist any book that sounds interesting, this is a great place to do with. The MDS system is also really useful for looking at books in a similar genre and also spotting any holes in my listing in my areas of interest, which are, let’s face it, really broad.
Book Tracking Apps for books and reading
As you can gather I am know using three new book tracking Apps:
- Bookshelf
- StoryGraph
- LibraryThing
as well as GoodReads doing it’s thing in the background when I read on my Kindle. The way I look at it is, sometimes dedicated apps for specific purposes make more sense than trying to make it all work in one App. I one hundred percent chose these particular apps as people I follow on YouTube are using them and provided a demonstration. There are several others out there so I recommend searching the App store. I am completely in the Apple eco-system so I don’t know if any of these are Apple only, sorry!
GoodReads Alternatives
So if you are using GoodReads and it is not hitting the sweet spot for your Books and reading, I really recommend seeing what is out there. It may be one of the originals and best known, but others have really, not just caught up, but over taken it. Especially in terms of aesthetics.
A Big Sort Out
Of course, being me, when I decided I wanted to use StoryGraph I spotted there was a GoodReads Import Tool, so I jumped in and imported everything.
This helps me see the true scope of my Books And Reading list. Not the colouring books as they were never in Goodreads, but the rest. This means that all the books that I want to be in LibraryThing are currently in StoryGraph too. So I regularly have little sessions chipping away at organising it all. I will be interested when I see the real number of books in my To Read list.
A lost convenience
One thing that I will really miss about GoodReads is the way I can start reading a book on my Kindle and mark it as currently reading, the same again when I finish it. If I am not mistaken it also automatically keeps date stamps of your progress. It is so convenient. Of course it makes sense as Amazon acquired GoodReads back in 2013.
It is not a big deal to to manually enter this on StoryGraph though, and worth it for the payoff of the advanced stats.
Even with the manual updates, StoryGraph still gives me richer insights into my Books And Reading. To be honest, I don’t think I will be removing Goodreads so I will just have a second place to store them.
If you are trying to organise your books or get on top of your reading habit I hope you have found some useful ideas.
