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...