I've been on Goodreads for years, and generally only used it to track what I wanted to read, what I had read, and my annual book goal. This week I started experimenting with using it differently, so I'm curious—how do you use the shelves, tags, or other functions to support your reading?
Reading is a key ingredient to maintaining my mental health, and a lifelong hobby that I only plan to deepen as I continue to age (I'm in my 40s). My goal is to make it easy for me to find my next book so I don't get stuck in a "what should I read" moment, and also optimize my use of free-to-read or already purchased books. Things I've been experimenting with:
Shelves
- I had some time away from work this week and learned a new library I joined allows up to 75 holds—a huge increase from the 10 my first library allows on Libby—so I decided to create a Library On Hold shelf to help me manage my holds (thank goodness for suspended holds).
- Then I was browsing my Kindle (ok, lets be honest, my 3 Kindles because they're all in airplane mode to preserve Libby checkouts), and decided to create an On Kindle shelf for books I hadn't read yet, but were on my Kindle. This includes many free books I downloaded while I was an Amazon Prime subscriber for years, many of which I hadn't read yet.
- Then I realized I already own some of the books on my Want to Read shelf—and I also own books that I haven't listed in Good Reads yet. So now I'm creating a new shelf called Physical TBR that indicates what I have immediate access to.
So far, I've identified 88 unread books on my Kindle and 82 books I have on hold at the library. Later this week I'll fully catalog my TBR shelf, and I'm guessing that will add 25+ books to the queue. Bonus, it will help me identify any books I really don't want to read, so I can donate them.
Tags
- When asked for some book recommendations this month, I went through my 5 and 4-star reviews, but realized sometimes it would be important to tell someone if I listened to the book or "read it with my eyes." I don't have a history of checking the format of the entry I choose for a book, so I created tags for ebook, audio, and printed. I've retroactively applied them to all of my Read shelf (probably 95% accuracy) and now I think it will be neat to better understand my reading habits and trends.
- Now I'm thinking I may also find value in tagging by fiction and non-fiction, and further by things like memoir, historical, thriller, read by author, food, series, etc. I think this will help me decide what to read next, support recommendations to others and start to notice patterns in what I'm reading.
- I briefly considered tags for how I acquired the book (library loan, purchased, gift, borrowed), but I think that's a little overboard, even for me.
Influencing Reading Behavior
All together, this is helping me to set an intention to not buy any books in 2026 (unless I know the author and want to personally support them). Knowing I have 100+ books available to me at any given time, that I want to read, makes that a pretty easy intention to set.
And now, the pre-orders I've already made don't count. 😉
by lizgross144