101.89 Sort read/unread books

[bugshaw]

101 Things

Carried away by reading a whole ten books in January, I thought I'd reassess (and reorder, and reshelve) the Unread Books. 491 fiction, plus a heap of non-fiction, graphic novels, Teach Yourself Visual Basic 3 in 21 Days and so forth. On the one hand, that's enough books to keep me going for ten years given my average recent reading rates if I don't get any more. On the other, 9 more books would make it a nice round number :-) and I do need to leave some space for Book Club.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

That way madness lies...

[bugshaw.livejournal.com]

It's worse: I counted by hard/paper/trade-paper back, and by author name, to get counts and percentages by each to guide my reading choices. That's what I used to do, and enjoy, to read a bunch of S's to get them down to the same level as other authors, or read three hardbacks to get them to a round number. But does one get greater satisfaction from reading two Is to get another number down to zero, or from trimming the top of the largest categories to even things up?

Anyhow - I made the lists this time, started to analyse them, (made a spreadsheet and sorted by decreasing number by first letter of author surname and printed it out for reference posterity) started to analyse it and use it to base future reading patterns on, then threw it away and instead I shall read whichever book it most appeals to me to read at any time. Hah! *does a little dance of happiness at realising gradual escape from semi-obsessive categorisation* :-) :-)

But no more than 9 new fiction books this year (bought or borrowed) - I should manage that.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

I am all for reading the book that appeals. The other way is too much work.

[inulro.livejournal.com]

I haven't counted mine, but I think it's somewhere in the 50-60 region. The reason the pile doesn't go down much is it's heavily skewed to non-fiction, which takes more time and brain power to get through.

[bugshaw.livejournal.com]

That's quite a manageable stack!

[timill]

<counts> 54 unread!

This is only possible because I started anew when we emigrated ;-)

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

I don't even know where all my unread books are!

There's a box in the living room that came home from Novacon via the Reading Group Xmas meal and has sat in the hallway until last week ... who knows, maybe I'll open it before Easter!

I like lists ... I should do a 101 Things to get stuff sorted out, sold off and decluttered. I'll make that item 1 of the list :-)

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

491? lightweight.

You can pick nine of mine to make it up to a nice round number!

Since you have 'em in a spreadsheet, how about doing LibraryThing? You can do a mass import ...

[bugshaw.livejournal.com]

Um, by "spreadsheet" I mean 27 rows, one for each letter of the alphabet plus one for anthologies/miscellaneous, then a column each for hardbacks, paperbacks and trade paperbacks, holding the number of books by authors with that surname initial :-)