A solution I've found to reading-list problems is this: find someone else interested in getting through a pile of books. You and this person can exchange 1 page chapter summaries once every few days, with great shame or some penalty attached to missing this deadline. (ETA: say, contribute five dollars to a pot for every day past a deadline for a chapter, where the person making the fewest contributions gets the pot at the end of the year, something like that). I've gotten through several (very boring but important) books in this way. I also recommend reading pomodoro style: give yourself one or two min per page, say.
As to organization: I say burn them all, and download e-books whenever possible. Then read them on an e-reader that can't go on the internet. Actual, physical books are horrible objects.
As to organization: I say burn them all, and download e-books whenever possible. Then read them on an e-reader that can't go on the internet. Actual, physical books are horrible objects.
I just don't read physical books. I started hitting the ebooks hard, and suddenly I was reading again.
Paul Graham claims books don't count as "stuff". THEY SO DO.
(The loved one is still into the paper things, so Amazon packages turn up regularly and moving house starts with twenty boxes that feel like they're full of plutonium.)
I've just finished my finals, and, after six years of college, I am faced with this fact: I have accumulated one heck of a lot of books, most of which I haven't read yet.
An app, or at the very least an algorythm, on how to manage them, make a reading list, and go about reading them, is something I really wish for, but I have no idea how to approach this problem in a time-efficient, productive way, and I wouldn't want to reinvent the wheel.
Do any of you have the same problem? What are your solutions?
The main post will be gradually updated and amended as the discussion progresses.
EDIT: For Mac Users, it appears that Delicious Library is a great solution. While looking for alternatives, I found this web app, libib, which seems very promising.
EDIT 2: I've spent most of the day cataloguing all of my stuff on libib, which is incredibly efficient... as long as the ISBN is readily-recognized. This doesn't work so well with rarer books and older books, but they're a small enough minority that I can delcare a smashing success.