Some of us have many titles on our ‘to be read’ list, sometimes dozens or hundreds we plan to get through. Successfully tracking everything on our wish lists, or what we have previously read and are currently reading, can be quite the pain.
If you need a simple and effective way of tracking your TBR and stats, then try some of the ideas below.
1. Reading List App
I promise you that I am not sponsored, simply recommending this app as it is what I currently use.
It allows for you to easily search for and add books by name, author, or ISBN. You can even customise the covers and names of them within your personal lists, too.
Even though there are some paid features, I’ve never needed to take the plunge to track my TBR and progression. The app never hassles users to pay up, which is refreshing.
2. Make a Spreadsheet
This is a tad more laborious, but is fairly effective once you set up all the columns and sorting. However, that is the catch, having to do all of this on your own.
Even if you are capable with spreadsheets, it will take some time. On top of that, it’s not as visually pleasing as an app or tool with a nice, user-friendly graphical interface.
Plus, spreadsheets are not fun to use on phones, so you’d have to do a lot of your updating and additions via a personal computer. Overall, spreadsheets work (and did work fine for me), but they aren’t as convenient as a book-tracking app.
3. Pen and Paper
Yes, these still exist! You could always utilise a spare notepad, or even just a lined A4 page, to track everything related to your reading. Once again, the downfall is the manual effort involved.
On top of that, it’s quite possible that your list can be lost or damaged, making all that hard work suddenly become wasted effort. So, not an ideal solution for most.
4. Type It Out in a Word Processor
My reasoning for placing this below pen and paper is simple; this is pointless.
If you’re willing to sit down and clatter out book titles, author names, and other details (e.g. page count, genre, original language, dates), then you may as well use a spreadsheet to begin with.
It would take roughly the same length of time, and be much more optimal for sorting and visual purposes. So, I wouldn’t suggest using a word processor unless you are staunchly against the above options.
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