Goodreads, and My OneNote Wiki Trick, Part II

[See Part 1, posted Oct. 16, 2012.]

As a bucket load of "Best of 2013" book lists is dumped upon us, the tools I've used to make order from the chaos of infinite possibility have continued to serve me well.  Goodreads, now under the Amazon corporate umbrella, is still my go-to web service for tracking books read, books anticipated, and books flung against the wall in disdain (or, more broadly, set aside).  I still cut-'n'-paste lists of fiction and nonfiction works by my favorite authors from their respective Wikipedia pages into Microsoft OneNote.

What's new is the omnipresence of a smartphone in my pocket (oh, grow up!).  I carry a Motorola Photon 4G (MB855), a nifty, if prior generation Android 2.3 unit on Ting, a low-cost MVNO (mobile service reseller) that completes calls over the Sprint network.  I've loaded the Goodreads Android app onto the phone, which allows me to enter new books and reading updates remotely.

However, for my stubby fingers on a medium-sized smartphone in the dim light of a library or at a yard sale, it's still a nuisance to search the Goodreads app for a complete list of an author's works, such as all books in Martin Cruz Smith's Arkady Renko series, especially if I need their chronological order.  I want to know quickly: have I read this particular title by Tom Robbins or Tom Sharpe before?  Do I have a copy at home?  Also, as I mainly use Wifi (free, on Ting) instead of 3G/4G (which costs) for mobile data, how can I access my book lists when I'm out and about, and not near a Wifi hotspot?

The solution I've fastened on is to make small notations in my OneNote author lists, which I use to annotate the cut-'n'-pasted Wikipedia pages.  I'll type "Finished" or "Started" by a title.  If I've already purchased, say, the third-from-now Inspector Rebus novel by Ian Rankin and stockpiled it on my overburdened bookcases at home, I'll mark that title with an 'x'.

Crucially, Microsoft OneNote on my Windows 7 PC can sync data with the OneNote Android app on my Photon 4G.  It takes a bit of set-up, but then it syncs the data via Microsoft SkyDrive whenever I'm near a Wifi hotspot and click on the corresponding OneNote folder on my phone.  Voilà: instant mobile access to my reading lists, want-to-read lists, and notes -- including which books I already own so I don't buy duplicates at the ten-cent sale.

In truth, it's not much different than carrying around a small, paper-based diary or notebook of your reading lists, except the OneNote solution scales and organizes free-form lists with your changing whims.  It would take a long time to write out all the book titles by all your favorite authors by hand instead of utilizing the ol' cut-'n'-paste routine.  Also, books are just one category for which you might like quick, remote access; you may also be interested in carrying pages of your CDs, DVDs, sports tickets, or wine cellar inventory.  Do you want to carry a paper diary for each one?

In summary: Yes, OneNote continues to be an excellent list-keeping tool.  Yes, it's now in my pocket.  And yes, I'm happy to see you.

Goodreads, and My OneNote Wiki Trick

The ol' cut-and-paste maneuver has transformed my life, yet again!

First, I started using the Goodreads web site (http://www.goodreads.com) to track my books.  When I say "my" books, I'm not using a strict definition of ownership; my tracking entries include books that have penetrated my gray cells at some point, whether I've owned them, borrowed them from the library, obtained them and later exchanged them at a Little Tiny Library, pre-read and re-gifted them, found them at a yard sale and resold them, donated them in overstuffed bags and collapsing bankers' boxes to some Friends of the Library sale or Goodwill, flung them against the wall after a screamingly bad paragraph and broken their little spines, or used them for fireplace kindling when we've run out of sticks.

The titles, thus entered, are categorized into books I've read, books I'm reading -- several at a time, usually, in various states of perusal --, books I intend to read, and books I've started but set aside, either indefinitely or permanently.  It's way more fun than it sounds; if you include your childhood Dr. Seuss and Hardy Boys treasures, as I do, your personal catalog can be very large indeed.

Why do this?  It's something akin to a line from the movie "Clockwise", spoken by the time-obsessed Headmaster played by John Cleese: "The first step to knowing who you are is to know where you are and when you are!"  To this, I would add: what you've read, seen, listened to, or otherwise experienced.  No doubt, The Baseball Encyclopedia or one of its competitors now has an app where you can track all the games you've attended; recalling and entering that data could keep me occupied for weeks!

Tracking books I've read has been both fun and motivational; I'm eager to recall what I've read and even more eager to finish reading books to expand my list.  It can also be social, if you learn that an acquaintance also has a book-tracking obsession.  (Friends and readers of this blog are welcome to view my collection, such as it is; my current reading list can be found in a sidebar to this blog.)

Still, even with Goodreads, something was missing from this rare instance of semi-obsessive organization on my part: the ability to ascertain at a glance when in a favorite author's career a particular book was written, and in what sequence.  I'm pretty sure Sue Grafton wrote A is for Alibi before B is for Burglar, but I'd have a harder time putting Carl Hiaasen's Sick Puppy, Tourist Season, and Double Whammy in the right order.  This is oddly important when you find a copy of, say, one of John le Carre's George Smiley spy novels on a thrift store shelf and want to know if he already knows what you know he will know.

Enter Microsoft OneNote and Wikipedia.  I looked up the Wikipedia entry for Carl Hiaasen, scrolled down to his bibliography, highlighted it, and cut-and-pasted it into its own page under an Authors tab in OneNote.  Now, rather than doing a Wikipedia search every time, I click into OneNote on my Windows 7 system tray, and with two more clicks I can see that Tourist Season was Hiaasen's first solo novel.  Easy and quick.

This isn't a patentable idea -- is it?  Surely not, but it's made my reading life more enjoyable and organized.  Now, if I could only keep my bookcases as tidy...

Whither the Bee?

I finished a book last night!  And the crowd goes crazy!

This is not news, but you should see my reading pile.  My backlog has grown to a height that would cause my mountain-climbing sister to pause before considering a summit attempt.  Parental pass-alongs, estate sales, library sales, and Goodwill stores are all my undoing, as is that evil American Council of the Blind thrift store in West Allis.  Boswell Book Company on N. Downer Street suckers me in with author talks by the likes of Craig Thompson and John Scalzi; I may sneak out without a $24.95 autographed hardcover in hand, but the pesky bargain shelf ambushes me on the way to the door.  Curiosity killed the cat, but it's burying me alive.

You'd think, then, that when I finish an amiable read like Samantha Bee's I Know I Am, But What Are You, I would instantly fling it back through the portal into the ocean of resale print whence it came, the better to make room for its successors.  However, I'm a cheapskate.  If I've spent 50 or 89 cents on a volume of inspirationally snarky personal essays for which, in an earlier, pre-abundance era, I might have shelled out $2.98 plus $3.49 shipping from the Edward R. Hamilton catalog, it feels like I've turned a profit.

What to do, then, with this exemplar of the epistolary, this Woodstock of wit?  I resell some medium-priced books on Amazon.com, but few popular titles sell for more than a literal penny.  Giving the book to my sister-in-law, who earlier had giggle-snorted her way through David Sedaris despite her Christian upbringing, would be an option; but with Ms. Bee's chapter on rude characters who expose themselves to the author on a recurring basis as if she were a perv magnet, this seems unwise.  That's before we even get to her confession of releasing a psychopathic, rapist guinea pig into her basement with the cats.

I decided at last to stage a ninja attack under cover of darkness and donate the book to one of the Little Free Libraries that have sprouted in our city, and many others, in recent months.  As my Beloved Spousal Unit has described in her blog, Dante's Wardrobe, the Little Free Library movement is a casually organized community resource provided by private citizens for the benefit of their neighbors and neighborhood.  It's a friendly sharing of books over the back fence, only the back fence is now on a prominent street corner.  The collection is a bit spotty, but you've got to love the due date.  It is possible, Dear Reader, that one or two items from our local giveaway spots may have found their way back into our home, adding to my personal Magic Mountain.  Oh, what foul cruelty Fortuna has spun to me today!

Samantha Bee, her guinea pig, and her murderous cats are now lurking inside the box at N. 52nd and W. Vine, waiting to pounce on a curious, bypassing pedestrian.  Neighbors, be forewarned!

How about Blog-opoly?

I bought a Monopoly game the other day. To get to it on the shelf, I had to browse past Star Trek-opoly, Star Wars-opoly, MLB- NFL- and NBA-opoly, the Batman, Beatles, Boston Red Sox, and Chicago White Sox editions, and the Christmas Story edition (no doubt a heartwarming holiday tale of mortgaging your toy train while it's still under the tree to buy a luxury condo). There's a Monopoly for Indianapolis and one for Minneapolis, and in the Superman edition, you can buy up Metropolis. There's the Lord of the Rings edition, the Harley Davidson edition, and an edition for seemingly every syndicated TV show from the past 30 years. M*A*S*H-opoly, The Simpsons-opoly, SpongeBob SquarePants-opoly. Even I Love Lucy-opoly. "No, Ricky, stop! Waaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!"

I bought a computer book the other day. To get to it on the shelf, I had to browse past Visual Basic for Dummies, Windows for Dummies, MacOS for Dummies, Linux for Dummies, Java for Dummies, C, C++, C# for Dummies (I didn't see the Bette Midler edition, C-Minus for Dummies), ASP, PHP, SQLServer, Oracle, and SAP for Dummies. There were Excel for Dummies, Access for Dummies, Word for Dummies, PowerPoint for Dummies, and to provide equal time, OpenOffice for Dummies. There were references for Dummies on computer languages I've never heard of and ones I wish I hadn't. Reeling, I sought refuge in the other aisles and found that the entire target market for retail book consumers now comprises nothing but Dummies. This was likely the conclusion of some publishing executive who'd read Market Research for Dummies on his lunch hour.

Only one place to go with all this madness: "Dummies-opoly". The first one to trade in four independent bookstores and erect a hotel on Amazon.com wins.