Book Organization

Less by Andrew Sean Greer won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.  Collecting and reading the Pulitzer Prize winning books has become a hobby of mine. I have not read this one yet nor am I able to purchase it at this time.

However I had recently taken a class in learning more functions of Microsoft Excel and I decided to make an Excel spreadsheet of all of the Pulitzer prize winning fiction. On this spreadsheet I include the year it was issued, if i own the book, the format i own the book in, if i read the book and the rating that I give the book on Goodreads.

Since I own so many books I thought it would be time consuming to catalogue every book I own. And since I keep an ongoing pile of books that I am ready to sell to Half Price Books it would be a more complicated system than I really want to admit. But I decided to also make a spreadsheet of 2018 issued Harlequin that I own since that is the type of book that I am a little more inclined to sell when I am done. So keeping an inventory is very helpful.

While I am a big fan of writing in notebooks and owning physical books I must admit that I find a lot of these digital tools not only helpful but actually enjoyable to work with. There is something about finding ways to bring everything together and finding patterns in things that I own or am working on that gives me a huge amount of pleasure.

I have gotten into pasting recipes that I love online into a folder on Google documents because it makes it very easy to bring up a recipe on my smartphone  when I am out and about. And just recently I discovered that I could send myself notes from my Kindle to my email. While this is not a feature I would use for reading a novel as much unless I am reviewing it for http://twincitiesgeek.com/ or my blog. I would also use this feature for business books and writing craft books. Those books often have questions that I find would be helpful in a Google document for when I am working on projects.

For instance this morning I finished Save the Cat. While it is a book geared towards screenwriters I found that the information was very valuable for an aspiring novelist to consider in plotting a book. There were questions in there that I found would be very useful while I am writing or editing a draft of a a novel. So I was thrilled that I could send a copy of this to myself so that I can upload it when I am writing. And I was excited when I realized that I could put my outline from Romancing the Beat into a new folder on my word and Google Documents called "Writing Resources."

I actually find that when it comes to  my books and my computer files that I really enjoy finding ways to be better organized. I wish I could have the same enthusiasm for my kitchen! I won't stop writing in my reading journal at all. However having digital tools for larger projects makes life easier. It decreases the paper clutter when I am working on a project and all I have to do is to pull up the appropriate document.