Well done, everybody! We made it through another year with enthusiasm, optimism and an impressive drive to achieve more in our writing and reading lives.
I’m gonna take a break from writing lessons this week. Instead, I’m excited to talk about my…
📊 Reading Spreadsheet
Caution: This is as nerdy as it gets.
Most people track what they read, right?
Wait, don’t they? Do you? I do. I’ve tracked what I read on Goodreads for the last ten-plus years. For the last five years, I’ve also tracked books in my bullet journals, although it’s less aesthetically pleasing and less versatile.
Now, my favourite tool for tracking what I read is a simple Google Sheets spreadsheet.
Originally built by Brock Roberts who I found through a YouTube video.
Despite its complex aesthetic, it’s quite simple. I track the title of the book, the author, the dates I read it, and a few other variables.
But that’s just the beginning.
🥇 Reading Goals and Reflections
This year, I aimed to read fifty books of novel length. I achieved that goal.
Before we celebrate, I will also admit that I counted audiobooks in this goal. Some people could argue that listening to books being read is cheating as I’m not actually reading them, but even I’m not such a stickler as to worry about that.
FIFTY BOOKS. That’s a lot of books. But the book lengths vary, so how do we track this?
Apart from my goal of reading fifty books, I set myself a separate Pages Read goal of 20,000 pages.
Pages Read can be a tricky metric to measure as each book’s page count varies based on the publisher’s choice of font, font size, and print dimensions.
But never worry, your trusty nerd has a trick up his sleeve. I use Calibre, an app to organize my ebooks:
Calibre. My preferred way of organising my ebook library.
In Calibre, there’s a Page Count extension that I use. The Page Count analyses each EPUB file based on chapter breaks and word count. It spits out a reliably consistent page count for each book.
So yeah, as I say, pretty nerdy.
What’s the point?
It’s easy to not read. That’s our normal state, not reading. If you don’t build the habit of picking up a book as you get into bed or taking one with you on your daily commute, then those numbers stay low.
I want those numbers high, baby. There are too many great books waiting to illuminate, edify and entertain us. So, tracking the books I read means I’m able to keep myself accountable and check in regularly to ensure I’m keeping up with my goal.
Tracking is good. But the greatest thing about is the CHARTS.
👸🏼 Pretty as a Picture
OH YEAH THAT FEELS GOOD
Whenever I start a new book, I enter its details into the Tracker sheet. When I finish a book, I enter the date I finished it, rate it out of five, and — I’m aware this is getting a bit over the top — record how many hours I spent reading it, which is available on my Kobo’s Activity page in my Kobo’s settings.
As the books stack up through the year, I get this lovely Gantt chart:
Gantt charts are a great way to visualisetimeliness
The graphs fill up the further through the year and the more books I complete.
I track quite a few metrics that don’t matter too much. But I refer to the sheet for some metrics to police my book choice. Due to living in the West and the power structures that be, the majority of books on my To Read list are written by white authors and published in the United States of America.
Nothing wrong with that, exactly, but there’s a lot to say for reading books by a diverse range of authors from different countries and backgrounds. So, there’s a column for Author Gender and Author Nationality (not ethnicity).
Note the bottom left, Author Gender graph
The spreadsheet has columns for Publisher, Genre, Digital/Physical, Publication Year, Acquired (where did I buy it?), Series (whether or not it’s standalone or part of a series), and Published Language.
🤷 What Good Does Any of This Do?
To be honest, keeping a detailed reading spreadsheet gives me a lot of analytical information about my reading habits, my book choice habits, and my prejudices when it comes to what I read and what I don’t finish.
But mostly, it satisfies my nerdy (some might suggest ADHD) itch.
It’s immensely satisfying looking back over these graphs throughout the year. It inspires me to pick up my Kobo and read more.
Do you track the books you read? I’d love to know how.
Do you have a Goodreads Reading Goal for 2024? Befriend me on Goodreads and let’s keep each other accountable.
If you’d like to give this spreadsheet a try, here is a link to make a copy of your own in Google Sheets. You can add it to your own Drive or Export it as .xls and use it in Excel. (Note for American users, make sure you change the sheet’s settings to be American date and time for your date format).
Add books to the Tracker sheet, and if a genre, publisher or country isn’t available in the data validation cell, add it to the Categories sheet and it’ll become available.
📣 Shout Out to: Big Beacon by Alan Partridge.
Funniest audiobook/book I’ve ever listened to/read
I listened to this on Audiobook and it’s the only book I’ve ever listened to on 1x speed.
I didn’t want to miss a second. It made me laugh every single time I listened to. Every sentence is hilarious and Steve Coogan’s performance added to the comedy.
If you like laughing at pathetic men who have a desperately high view of themselves to cover up their insecurities (which I do), then Big Beacon is about to be your favourite book.
Without exaggeration, this book now holds my top spot in Funniest Books of All Time.