Who else totally loves nerding out about organization? I know I’m not the only one or places like the Container Store wouldn’t exist! As I go through and recategorize some of my books on my Goodreads, I thought it might be fun to discuss a little bit about how I currently organize my shelves.
Right now, I really like using Goodreads to organize the books I haven’t read yet and make it easier to find something I’m in the mood for, as well as to track some of the things I need to read.
When I add a book to my shelves, I first organize it based on genre. Unsurprisingly, my TBR shelves for fantasy and romance are by far the biggest, though I’ve got a decent amount of other books on there too. If a book fits more than one genre, for instance if it’s a memoir dealing heavily with feminist topics, then I’ll shelve it on multiple shelves so it will show up when I click on the particular mood I feel like reading.
I currently have fiction as kind of a catchall for everything that doesn’t necessarily fit neatly into my other shelves, though it’s a big enough shelf that I should maybe break it down some, while YA is mostly contemporary YA with a little bit of historical for good measure.
One of the shelves I use the most is my TBR: 2017 shelf, as it holds all of the books I purchased in 2017 but haven’t read yet. I’ve also started a TBR: 2018 shelf of books I’m buying this year, and I’m hoping to keep that number smaller and turned around every three months. I also have a TBR: Publishers shelf for books I’ve received from publishers, a TBR: Kindle shelf for unread books that I currently have on my kindle, and a TBR: Deferred shelf for books I own and haven’t read, but that I don’t feel the need to read just yet (I talked about it more here).
The other shelf I use the most is my Wishlist shelf. I created this as a way to stop myself from buying a bunch of books, as this shelf lets me keep track of the books I’m most excited to read, but I try not to dip into it too much while I work on whittling down my physical TBR. I like this a lot because it’s fluid and easy for me to take books off when I lose interest without feeling bad while also being a convenient place to aggregate the books I really want to buy and read so they don’t get lost in my other TBR shelves.
Right now, my to-be-read shelves are pretty organized, but once I’ve read a book, I strip it of all shelving and just put it on a shelf based on the year I read it in. This works for me for now, but I’m considering changing this. I like the idea of putting together a shelf of quick recommendations for people perusing my Goodreads page, and I’m super impressed by people who shelve all of their books for the different representations (i.e. bisexual mc) or plotlines (i.e. friends to lovers) featured in a book. Part of what makes me resistant towards doing that, though, is that I like to keep my read and unread shelves separate and that’s kind of hard to do on Goodreads (I can’t just create a master folder for all of my unread books subfolders). I also think that gets maybe more detailed on my Goodreads than I’m interested in? I’m not sure. So far I haven’t had a strong enough reason to do it, but maybe I’ll change my mind the longer I blog.
Anyways, how do you use Goodreads to organize your books? What do you find useful when looking at others’ Goodreads pages? Let me know in the comments!
Dani's Bookshelf 
I wish we could make sub folders a thing on Goodreads. I want to be able to separate my romance novels by trope. Haha. One day.
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That would be awesome! They’re really underestimating the need to create extensively organized folders
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I also like organization! But I think my Goodreads is probably the least organized thing in my life lol. The only shelves I really have other than TBR is top TBR and ones I for sure want to read in 2018
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Those are the most important ones though!
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I’m a huge organization fan, however, I also am daunted by the thought of reorganizing all the books on my Goodreads shelves! My organization is pretty basic. I’m always in awe of people who have their shelves super organized!
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I don’t blame you, it’s super intimidating! That’s probably a large part of why I’m reluctant to organize mine further. If you ever do it, how would you reorganize your shelves?
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I’m such a planner, I’d probably research how other people organize their shelves and do it from there. If I were to do it right now without planning, I think I’d categorize it by priority somehow.
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I’m really into organising (and reorganising!) my book shelfs, but sadly I’m always slipping and adding stuff to my TBR or adding old reads without categorising them properly. I need to spend a few weeks with my GR sorting this out. I have a bunch of ideas for new shelfs – like based on where I bought the books, how much I paid, and the condition (I buy a lot of stuff second hand as well) but it’s just too intimidating to think about right now 😦
I really like your idea of a wishlist, and I might just have to steal that, if its going to help with cutting down the over spending!
When I’m looking at other pages, I generally only look at board categories like “fantasy”, “romance” and stuff that like. But what I find most useful is when looking at individual book pages to see how they’ve been shelved.
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You’re making me really wish Goodreads allowed subfolders so I could more easily organize books by where I bought them, genre of read books, genre of unread books, etc., without ending up with a massive list of folders!
Have you seen Sophie at Portal in the Pages’s reading spreadsheet? I haven’t really looked into it because I’ve generally been ok with Goodreads and creating my own spreadsheet at the end of the year for my statistics post, but I think I might go back and investigate it more after your comment. It might be the ultimate book organization tool…
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I’ve never seen that spreadsheet, but I’ve been (trying) to keep one of my own [here: https://goo.gl/rMhVo3%5D. I did pretty terribly at maintaining the sheet last year, but hopefully this year will be better.
What I’d really like to do is create a sort of personal library folder, with pics, dates, comments, etc on all the books I have on my shelves, but I get vaguely anxious just thinking about it :-p
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Your spreadsheet is awesome! I definitely need to step up my book tracking game. Good luck doing better at maintaining your sheet this year!
And yeah, I don’t blame you for getting anxious thinking about that. As awesome as it would be, it’d be a lot of work to put together!
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Oops that link seems broken. Here: https://goo.gl/Ywd3u4
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Organization is my favourite.
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It’s the best!
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