How do you track your reading? With being online we like to compare stats with other people: have you read this? how many pages? how many books? and so a lot of us will use some sort of tracking method for our reading.
For me, I started tracking as a way to be accountable to myself. If I was tracking how many pages I read in a day then the fact that I was or wasn’t reading was staring me in the face. After a long period of not reading this was something that really got me back into the habit of it. It also lets me see how my reading interacts with my daily life, whether I read more or less on weekends etc. It’s just handy! And one thing I have found it that after tracking this for a few years, it’s meant that I’m getting pretty good with my tbr’s. For the whole of 2021 so far (touch wood) I’ve been able to read all the books on my tbr! No complaints from me!
I don’t just track my pages per day though. I’m a little obsessed with stats! I have quite a bad memory for things like…my own activities 😂 and so I like to track everything possible to do with my reading so that I can have a good overall picture and not forget about things!!
I track the genre’s that I read, the age range I’m reading in, the number of pages each day but also the length of the books that I’m picking up and how many of them I’m reading each month. I track information about the authors, their nationality, their native language, and their gender identity. All of this lets me build up a picture of what I’m truly reading. Before I looked at the stats I’d assumed I was reading a load of YA books, but I’m not! Adult is actually my most read age bracket which was such a surprise! It creeped up on me without me noticing!
All in all, I have my bullet journal, I have my Instagram where I use templates to track my reading each month in my stories as well as posting stories each time I finish a book. I used Goodreads as well (I’ve been resisting moving to StoryGraph cause I’m lazy, can’t lie), and I also use 2 different excel spreadsheets!! I’ve been using Sophie from Portal in the Pages’ spreadsheet for a few years now and it’s absolutely fantastic, it tracks so many metrics and she has it all set up so that you just input the information and graphs and stats are calculated! And I also use G from Book Roast’s CAWPILE spreadsheet for my ratings. This one is newer, I’ve only started from this year, and it has really helped in making my ratings across fiction books more accurate and reliable, as you rate different sections of the book (characters, atmosphere, enjoyment etc) out of 10 and a score is calculated for you at the end.
I admit all of this may be a little over the top, but I like it! It really gives me a complete picture of my reading!! And I have to be honest… I do more than this too!! But that’s not really tracking my reading specifically and this post was already long enough!!
Do you track your reading at all? Do you track as much as I do? Let me know!!
Abi of Pellinor 