Toward the end of last year, fed up with my failed attempts to keep track of books I’d read and books I wanted to read, I created a Scrivener project to manage my reading lists. It’s proven so successful, I thought I’d show it off.
Clicking the index-card icon in the inspector “Synopsis” header switches to image mode, allowing you to drag cover images onto the cards.
I renamed the Draft folder “Library” and gave it a fitting custom icon via Documents > Change Icon. Each book title goes into this as a new document, so the book can have unique meta-data and a synopsis (or synopsis image). Notes about the book, anything from a few thoughts after reading to a full review, go into the document text.
Although I tend toward filing systems, I’ve kept my Library as a flat list rather than pigeonhole entries into folders. Instead, I use keywords to mark a book’s genre, which lets me tag it with multiple terms–a book might be “YA”, “steampunk”, and “mystery”, for example–and then use project search to filter my list.
In the Project > Meta-Data Settings, I’ve repurposed the Label and Status settings to show the book’s state–read, unread, or shelved–and my rating. I tint the icons in the binder with the label so each title’s read state is immediately visible. I colour the index cards with the label as well.
Label is renamed “Status”, with its colour shown throughout Scrivener via the View > Use Label Color In submenu. The default Status is renamed “Rating” and uses 1-5 stars, added from Edit > Special Characters on the Mac and Edit > Character Map on Windows.
Most other form information I enter as custom meta-data. Since I use dates in multiple fields, for first read, reread, potential release date, and publication date, I prefix the date, year-first, with a letter so I can search for a particular field. For example, I can assemble a list of all new books read in 2015 by searching meta-data for “r2015” or list all books total for the year by searching for both “r2015” and “re2015” (rereads).
Searches I run frequently I save as collections, via the magnifying-glass menu in the project search bar. It’s quite gratifying to load my “read” list and see it growing over the year!
If you keep a reading list, what details do you record and how do you keep it organised?