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!

Neverread

Someone else will have to write the definitive review of Neil Gaiman's darkly comic fantasy novel Neverwhere, for I didn't make it past page seventy.

That's not Gaiman's fault. Neverwhere is a perfectly entertaining story, at least so far, with enough colorful whimsy and clever lines to fill a Monty Python movie. There's an Arthur Dent-type urban everyman as protagonist, a mysterious damsel in distress, two Looney Tunes villains whose urbane, Dickensian dialogue only heightens their cartoonish menace, a host of Doctor Dolittle-like transgressions of the animal-human communication barrier, and enough impressionistic descriptions of London proper and the London underground to fill a Fodor's guide.

To be sure, I'm not usually one for the fantasy genre. Fiction is already unreal enough for me; fantasy fiction seems like overegging the pudding. Moreover, having seen "Stardust" on the big screen and a recent, Neil Gaiman-penned "Doctor Who" episode on the small screen, I think I get Gaiman's recurring meme: normal meets fantastical at a mysterious frontier, to both scary and wonderous effect, à la Terry Gilliam. The spooky, semi-occult themes of fantasy lit don't often grab me -- but that's not what stopped me from reading this light, slightly subversive thriller in mid-noir.

Nor can I articulate any particular objection I had to Roy Blount, Jr.'s Hail, Hail, Euphoria!, the noted humorist's personal, crafty, scene-by-scene explication of the Marx Brothers classic flick, "Duck Soup", that kept me from finishing that book; nor can I recall why An Object of Beauty, Steve Martin's amiable novel of the modern art collecting world, failed to capture my eyeballs for more than a couple of chapters, for it too looked promising; as did a fascinating historical treatment of the New York City art world, The Pop Revolution by the late Alice Goldfarb Marquis.

I actually did finish The Year of the Hare, a wry picaresque tale set in Finland that became a touchstone of the 1970s back-to-nature movement. In truth, however, Arto Paasilinna's symbolism-laden allegory was less than 200 pages long and super-simple reading; it's one of those Euro-fables that your foreign language teacher might have assigned to your tenth grade class, were it not already in English. Broken Glass by Alain Mabanckou, a starkly riotous and ribald African novel of similar brevity and simplicity, comprising a series of low episodes told to a street-smart Congolese bartender and relayed in his purported diaries, deserved a much better fate in my hands than it received, but halfway through fell victim to my all-too-brief attention span and manic library habits.

Therein lies the tale. Each trip to the public library is a festival of eyes-bigger-than-stomach reading avarice. The ritual begins with the guilt- and sadness-inducing return of a big bag o' books that I haven't even begun to read, despite initial excitement, earnest intentions, one or two online renewals, and a grace period, along with perhaps two or three books that I speed-read through page twenty or fifty in the last hour of their due date, just to get the sense of what I would be missing, before dropping them into the slot. There! Now I can focus on the two or three checked-out books still at home, left behind as it were, a sensibly small number of items awaiting my undivided attention. Naturally, as long as I've already spent the gas money to return the others, I'll just take a quick peek at the New Books section by the front door...and two and a half armloads later, I'm on my way.

Once home, I'm doomed, pile-driven to distraction by a looming, unread stack of erudition and expert storytelling on the oval side table in the living room, the defined check-out period for each item establishing an anxiety-inducing expiration date. There's compound guilt, of course: so long as I'm not reading them, I'm not experiencing the cozy, enlightened life of writerly illumination that I'd imagined they would confer upon me when I checked them out; so long as they're in my possession, I'm preventing another equally delusional County Library cardholder from checking them out with similar earnest intent. The cycle repeats.

Only one way to break this pernicious recurrence, this wretched "Groundhog Day" scenario, this Fortuna-thon: discover a new musical infatuation on YouTube to absorb my restless mental energies, and return all the books. As it turns out, they have CDs at the library, too.

Might As Well Be on Scrolls

I don't want to answer the "48 Things About Me" quiz that the Brick Duck passed along to me on Facebook this week. Instead, I'll offer a list of largely unread library books that I have in a stack at home, awaiting my attention:

Aimee Baldridge, "Organize Your Digital Life: How to Store Your Photographs, Music, Videos, and Personal Documents in a Digital World"

Stewart Brand, "Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto"

Linda Greenlaw, "Seaworthy: A Swordboat Captain Returns to the Sea"

Susan Hasley, "Intelligence" (novel)

Chuck Klosterman, "Eating the Dinosaur" (essays)

David Maraniss, "Into the Story: A Writer's Journey Through Life, Politics, Sports, and Loss"

Daniel H. Pink, "Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us"

I'll probably finish most of "Seaworthy" and skim through "Eating the Dinosaur", and that's about it before they all have to go back. Discipline, Drive, and Intelligence are all fine aspirations, but do they really trump playing "Monopoly" on Pogo.com? Organizing my digital life is important but not urgent, and as such will just have to wait.

When did I stop reading entire books, anyway?

YA: Yea or Nay?

I've checked out a slew of young adult (YA) novels from the library for the first time since my mom took us to the bookmobile stop during summer vacations.

Hopefully this is not as weird as it sounds. I want to see if my writing impulses translate readily into a particular genre, age level, and subject matter -- even though my written output to date has primarily consisted of Excel spreadsheets and grocery lists. Taking inspiration from the best cross-generational writers, such as Carl Hiaasen and Neil Gaiman, I want to find a cadre of sharp, creative voices to emulate.

I plan to keep my reading list realistic rather than fantastical, steering clear altogether of the astoundingly prevalent dragons-and-swords subgenre. Squishy romances and teen emo won't work for me either: big surprise! Adventure, mystery, sports, and humor -- as well as nonfiction -- are the more appealing categories.

Has the fantasy of writing The Great American Novel morphed into the yen to strike it rich with the next Harry Potter series? Is there gold in them thar hills?

Coyote Reads?

Remember the large coyote that we saw hanging out in the park near the Denver Tech Center? I saw it again -- at least I think it was the same one -- crossing South Holly Street near the Koelbel Library in the adjacent Denver suburbs. This raises the obvious question: Why did the coyote cross the road, anyway?

* To borrow the library's only copy of How to Catch Flightless Birds Using Acme Rockets?

* To skulk away from the park slowly, as the atypically empty swings at the playground sway back...and forth...back...and forth...

* To continue its homeward trek after the Lobo-bama inauguration?

* To enter an Oscars(TM) betting pool at the neighbors?

* To attend a Carnivores Anonymous meeting?

* To catch up with the chicken?

* Or was it, as I strongly suspect, to scare two impressionable, recently transplanted Northeasterners who don't know coyotes from cacti, just for fun?

All I know is, Wile E. was grinning at me like he knew something that I didn't. What he doesn't know, of course, is my vehicular history with respect to the animal kingdom. Heh, heh, heh...

Further reports as events warrant. That is, assuming I'm still here and have avoided becoming one of said events.

Arms Race

I collected my fourth public library card in Colorado today. This puts me one card ahead of my beloved spousal unit, who has only three and is totally envious that my new Douglas County card has a really cool oval shape.

However, as she reminds me, she has access to the University of Denver's library as an adjunct faculty member; moreover, her campus ID card has a nifty color photo. So it's possible that she has, in fact, pulled into the lead.

Don't you wish the U.S., Russia, and China would compete like this? It's cheaper than missile defense, and they could all chill out with some audio books from the library while waiting for the next intelligence report.