For a brief period last year, I had the crazy idea that I’d do a mini-inventory of my books each month. Basically, I decided I’d count all the unread books on my shelves and on my e-reader, then track my monthly reading and buying and see if my numbers went down (the goal) or up (the reality). The point was both to remind myself that I actually own oodles of books that I should get around to reading and discourage myself from buying more books than I read.
Did it work?
Well. No.
I quit my counting project after a few months. My spreadsheets were messy, my tracking was arbitrary, and in the end, who needs the pressure?
But here I am, back again with a brand new approach!
Thanks to being turned on to the oh-so-fun-and-useful Libib app (www.libib.com), I have a whole new way to get geeky about counting my books.
With Libib, you can create libraries of books, movies, music, etc, organized in whatever way suits you. Adding books is super easy — there’s a scanning feature, so I went through my entire house and starting scanning book barcodes using my smartphone. The scanning feature won’t work for books that have bookstore stickers over the original barcode, and I also got incorrect results for some of my older books. Most of the time, though, scanning worked beautifully, letting me build my home library record over the course of a few hours. (And for anything that didn’t scan, manual entry via the website was quick and easy.)
I decided to include just the unread books in my house, so I’d have a starting place for keeping track. I broke my inventory out into four categories, and here’s where I stand at the moment:
I decided to exclude book I felt pretty sure I’d never read — and in fact, created a new stack of books to donate or give away while I was at it. I also excluded e-ARCs, and any Kindle titles that I doubted I’d get to.
Grand total: 657
The last time I counted in February 2016, my numbers were:
Books: 428
E-books: 76
Graphic novels: 40
Non-fiction: 52
For a total of… 596
Hmmm. My numbers keep going up and up. To be fair, I’ve done a lot of public library reading this past year, but still, I’d like to think I’m reading books from my home library too. I did make a big dent in my graphic novel collection, so yay me!
Anyway, this is all really just for my own bookish entertainment. (My son thinks I’m a total nerd.) I’m not going to be doing monthly updates, but it might be fun to see where I end up at the end of the year.
Meanwhile, my project 2.0 with Libib will be to go back through my house with the scanner one more time and create a “books I’ve read” library too. You never know when that dreaded moment will hit, as you stumble on a book you’re tempted to buy and think “wait, do I own that one already?” Okay, this mainly happens to me in regards to my Stephen King collection, but it’s still fun to have a reference of all my books ready at my fingertips.
Anyone else crazy about counting books? What methods do you use for keeping count?
I’m so glad I discovered Libib!
A big step forward over my older methods, after all.