Those paying attention to the sidebar may notice I’ve hacked out the “currently reading” section. It was giving me too much guilt as I skipped from book to book that wasn’t on my list, plus it wasn’t the most convenient system, as it wouldn’t allow me to build up much of a record of all the books I own. Therefore, I’ve decided to switch over to Librarything, and display random books from my library. Some of them are read, some of them have not been read, and whatever I’m currently reading may or may not show up on the screen… but what I’m currently reading changes from day to day, and that’s too much updating.
UPDATE: I’ve changed it again, to display random book covers from my library. I like that best, I think.
So there you go!
UPDATE 2: I’ve entered about half the books I own: all the ones in my apartment. I keep unread books where I live, and the books I have already read are over in my office, across campus. Entering those would be an easy, minor task during office hours, but the problem is that the Internet connection still isn’t working there, so it’ll be a few weeks before I’ve entered all those books in as well. Until then, you’re seeing my massive Lalpile, some of which dates back a decade. I’m determined to read all these books in the next few years, and get rid of those I don’t plan on reading again, or don’t blow me away.
Of course, there are more books — a bunch more, over at my mother’s house, in the garage. I won’t catalog them for a long time, though.
Have you considered All Consuming? I like it because it’s not focused on what I own (I use MediaMan for that), but what I actually consume, books and movies both (one can include music, but I don’t use it for that).
All Consuming has a “currently consuming” feature, but I gave up using it. The guilt got to me, too.
As a narcissistic bonus, you can publish your consumption via an RSS feed. And your account at All Consuming also works at Lists of Bests.
Hmmm. I shall have to consider it. So many services.
The thing about Librarything is that it can track who you’ve loaned your books to, which I imagine will get some use in the future, probably.
Not only so many services, but so many good services. Librarything was one of the ones that I considered before settling on my current solutions. Listal was another one.
I might use AllConsuming for a different purpose — as you say, to track what I actually consume, which I sometimes don’t own, such as with library books — but I decided to get a Lifetime Membership with Librarything as my collection of books is a big deal to me, and I’ve wanted to catalog them in a database for a while now.
I will probably also try to find a service for cataloging my DVDs and CDs, but it’s a much lower priority.