Comment on I've been thinking about using a self hosted private book tracking tool in t
jarulf@mstdn.social 1 week ago @wil @bookstodon I'm not really a very techie person either, but I do dabble a bit.
It sounds like you have a great system, one that obviously works for your needs.
I've been using Calibre to keep track of my ebooks and "manage" DRM as well as to copy the books to my ereader, and StoryGraph to track my reading. I don't use the social features much.
1/2
@wil @bookstodon
I'm starting to think my whole self hosting idea may be the wrong way to go, and I've been down this road before.
I made a post some months ago about simply using old style index cards for a catalogue and combining this with a simple book journal.
I know I'd be terrible at keeping up with the journal though, but it is probably the way I'd prefer to do this.
2/2
@jarulf I'm using Openreads, it's not self hosting, but it's private, no socials, free/open source software, it's a mobile app. If you change mobile phones, you'll need to export, backup, and import into the new one.
It can add books by scanning the ISBN, it divides books by reading, for later, finished. It captures days of reading, it allows you to take notes, give stars, insert number of pages. It also gives us statistics, how many books we read, the book we took more/less time to read, number of pages read, by year, by month, etc. it also allows tagging to tell if it's paperbook, audiobook, eBook. I also use tags to tell if it's a library book or a book I own.
If you decide not to self host, maybe it can be of interest.
(I also use a paper reading journal for my notes, reviews when the books ask for them, an excuse to writing by hand, but this more practical information stays in Openreads)
Link to features and stores to download:
https://github.com/mateusz-bak/openreads
@wil @bookstodon
@paulasimoes @wil @bookstodon that does look like a great app, thank you. I'll definitely take a proper look at it, even if I'm probably more towards a physical journal now. It could be a complement to that though.
@jarulf @wil @bookstodon Please ignore if not interesting to you: I once was thinking about moving to a digital journal to make tracking easy and self-hosted for me. As far as I envisioned, it'd be a combination of a spreadsheet and a text document in my cloud: the spreadsheet for tracking quantitative information and the text document for writing down thoughts and adding pictures/doodles like on a mood board. 1/2
@fuzzyleapfrog @bookstodon I don't generally ignore cool suggestions, even if I don't end up using them. :-)
I keep going back and forth on this, probably overthinking things quite a bit;
do I keep using StoryGraph (which I like), go completely analogue with a physical journal, self-host something, do I really care that much about the privacy issues etc etc.
1/2
@fuzzyleapfrog @bookstodon
As I wrote earlier today, I'm leaning towards a physical journal and a card catalogue rn. I'd still be using Calibre, and probably StoryGraph, not least for the fun statistics.
But the idea of a pen and paper journal appeals to me, everything doesn't have to involve a computer.
@jarulf @wil @bookstodon I don't know if I'd use a template for the latter but one could certainly set up one to structure the digital journal page. 2/2