How I Organise…Good Reads

How I Organise… is the feature friday on a paper town. This is the third post out of 10.

Good Reads is probably one of the most used websites for book lovers alike. Whether you have a blog or not, Good Reads is extremely helpful. While on my blogging/life organising spree a few weeks back, I did a little work on my Good Reads profile. 

So here is my Good Reads profile page:

So this is what my Good Reads page looks like! As you can see, I've got my 'Must Read' shelf as the showcase shelf. Is that what it's called? I don't know! Underneath I have some other different shelves. Not many, but they keep me organised enough! I'm finding it particularly helpful to have the 'read 2014' shelf, as it means I'm able to keep track of what I've read so far this year(not much as you can see..)!

So what do my different shelves consist of? The good, old typical three you start off with, which are Read, Currently Reading and To Read. I've then added my own. I've got my wish list, which is obviously books I don't have and want to read. Once I've bought a book, I transfer the book over to my 'to read' shelf, as then I actually have the book! I've then got my did-not-finish shelf, which is helpful. Even if I haven't finished a book, having it on this shelf gives me the opportunity to revisit the book just in case I wasn't in the proper mood for it!

Then we've got the series shelf! Every book I read that is part of a series gets added to this shelf. Then there's the bought shelf, which has all the books I've bought, obviously! Then as talked about earlier, the read-2014 and read-2013 shelf. (I've already mentioned my must read shelf above!) As I said before, having these read-year shelves is helpful for me to see what I've read throughout the year as it will help to see if there was a pattern with my reading! 

In connection to this, there is the 2014 release shelf, which is great as it will help me to see how many new releases I've read this year! I only intend to update this shelf during the year we're in. Come January 2015, I'll then stop updating my 2014 releases and updating my 2015 releases shelf instead!

Then we've got the bought, e-book, library and gift shelves! These are helpful as I can see what the source was of the book..kind of! It also helps me to see how I tend to read books, or if I borrow more than I own (which I don't!).

I find that having the different shelves is a great way to keep my Good Reads account organised, as well as myself. I also use the app Literally (currently in Beta mode still, I think!) which is similar to Good Reads!

I hope this was helpful. Let me know what you thought - I'll probably be sat on a Zante beach as you read this…and it's my birthday tomorrow! Hooray!

How I Organise…My Reviews

How I Organise.. is the weekly feature friday on the blog. It runs over 10 weeks, with this being the second week. 

As a book blogger, one of the main things I do is write reviews and talk about books. So how do I organise myself and know which books I read that I need to write a review for? At the moment, it's not that hard, but my little system, again, involves a good, old spreadsheet!

As you can see above, it is a very small system at the moment. I have the month read, the book title and author, and then my rating (which I think is going to be my new rating system!). I also put next to my rating 'Yes' or 'No', depending on if I've reviewed it or not - this isn't pictured, as you can see. This is actually quite helpful for the Monthly Recap posts as you can clearly see what you've read. It can also be helpful when doing the Yearly Recap!

As you can see, there are colours in the picture above. It sounds bad, but I can't remember why it's blue (I've gone onto the spreadsheet now and updated the blue cells to purple). The purple is for normal, physical books and the mint is for eBooks. I should also mention, if I receive any ARC's, I'll put a *ARC in the cell next to whether it's been rated or not. This could probably be placed better, such as between the Author and the Rating columns, but as it's a very rare occurrence for me to receive ARC's, I'm not too bothered about it at the moment! 

As I have exams at the moment and I'm switching to a new job, it's easy for me to know which books I've read and need to review and which I haven't, as I haven't been reading much, but after my exams I'm hoping to read 2-3 books a week, which means I'll be updating and using this system a whole lot more often. 

I hope this has been helpful, and that it's given some you some ideas as to how you can organise the books that you need to review. I know a lot of people like to use lists, but I like using Excel, plus it means I'm being just a little bit more eco friendly!

How do you organise your review lists? Was this helpful? Let me know!

How I Organise…My Books

What better way to start off the How I Organise.. series with telling you how I organise my books?! I never really had a set way of organising my books because I don't really have that many on my shelves (surprisingly shocking collection, actually, for someone who blogs about books), but since starting this blog, I've decided to become a bit more organised. 

So to organise my books, I actually use Excel. You'd think I'd want to get away from it since I use it so often in the day due to my job, but it's actually a really good way of keeping up with which books you own. 

In the picture above (sorry if it's too small!), you can see how I organise my books. I organise my books via the last name of an author, as I find that this so much easier for me. 

I then put the title of the book, whether it's part of a series and whether I've read it or not. Across from that, I put my rating, the classification, so whether it's YA, Adult, Children's, etc. and the genre. I also then put what format the book is in and whether it's signed. Then lastly, how the book came into my hands and who the publisher is. 

This is a great way of organising my books as I can see the books I own, and which books I still need to read. It's also important to me that I have this as, although I know which books are on my shelf, it means that just in case I do forget, I can see which books I already own. This means that I won't buy any duplicates! I find that it's also quite helpful for writing reviews, as I've got all the information, such as the publisher and source!

So now you've seen how I manage my books. Next week, I'll be showing you how I organise reviews!

If you've got any questions, please let me know! So how do you organise your books? Do you do the same, or do you do it differently? 

How I Organise...

Hi everyone! So you may or may not have seen my tweets the other day, but I have an announcement! I have decided to start doing a mini feature on my blog every week for the next 10 weeks called How I Organise…! I'm a complete organisation/planning lover, plus I'm really starting to make an effort to become even more organised! I'm really excited to start this mini feature, as I feel that it'll give my blog a little bit more to it rather than just book reviews. And hey, if you want to get involved, please do, just don't forget to add you link to the comments on a post!

I think this feature will be really fun, and I'm hoping that it will help provide some tips to those of you who may feel that you need to be just that little bit more organised, whether it be with your books, or your blog, or even your daily life! I'll be posting How I Organise.. every Friday. I would've placed it more in the middle of the week, but I know there's meme's through out the week, such as Top Ten Tuesday and Waiting on Wednesday, and I wanted to have a few reviews and other posts between the memes and things!

So there we go! That's my small announcement. I'm really excited and can"t wait to get started on this! My first post will be coming up next week, so keep an eye out!

Ps. What do you think of the new blog background? I'm going to be carrying out some minor tweaking over the next couple of weeks, so you may or may not notice some minor changes going on!