Keeping track of series amidst a sea of books
More Series than I Imagined
When it came to series, I was convinced that I was in the midst of five or maybe six of them but surely no more than ten. This week I found out that I was way off the mark with my estimations. The current tally is a grand total of 24. I found out because I decided I had to come up with a system to track them and so set out to do up a spreadsheet.
My New System
After some contemplation, I finally came up with a system that suits me. Of course, series name, author, book titles and series number had to be included by default. Then I picked out other relevant information: original date of publication, reading status, rating (with and without audio, if I listened to the audiobook), date read, length and source.
For ratings, I adopted the the ratings that I average out according to the various aspects that matter to me in a book, such as prose, characterisation, plot, etc; thus the two decimal places. Also, foe the length I adopted the page numbers from the original hardcovers, in order to have a common basis to compare the lengths of all these books by.
Finalized Version of the Spreadsheet
At the top, I included the legend and general overview of the numbers. I figured that colour-coding would be the quickest way for me to determined my progress with all the book series.
I made sure to include my general reading status for each series in brackets. In the case of The Lunar Chronicles, it’s “in progress”, meaning to say I started the series and there are books in the series that have been published that I intend to read.
For series that I started but am waiting for the next book to be published, so I can read it, I marked as “up to date” and colour-coded the next title in blue. That way I would know that I have to wait.
While finished series technically don’t need to be tracked anymore, I included them anyway, so that I’d have a quick overview of the books I read in a series. A lot of people seem to think that the middle book in a trilogy, for example, is bound to dip in terms of ratings. That’s why I’m curious if I experience that too in my reading.
For DNF series, I have two kinds: series where I lost the desire to read the next books and series where I simply marled a book as DNF and as a result, abandoned the entire series. For books I have no intention of reading, I basically marked them out in grey, although I still included publication dates and lengths.
Given that I hardly abandon books, I was surprised to realize that I have lower inhibitions towards DNF for series. Perhaps it’s because series require a greater investment of time. But that’s a topic for another day.
Lastly, I included higher priority TBR series, such as the series of which I own books, as well as series I have every intention of reading. I was curious how many series I would drum up in the end. Turns out, my spreadsheet now contains a total of 60 series.
With that, I walked away from this exercise, wishing I had a lot more time to read because there’re so many great series and books I want to read and I didn’t even fully realize it before this week.
I think I went through all the series that I’m keeping up with, and I was really surprised by how many I was in the middle of! I don’t really keep track of them like you’ve done, with such an organised spreadsheet! :O I have one unpublished page where I have them divided into three lists: current, future, and dropped.
Current lists the ones that I am interested in, and I’m in the middle of. Future means ones that I want to get around to. And Dropped lists the ones that I just feel like abandoning. :)
I don’t keep track, but I’m pretty sure I’m somewhere around the 24 mark as well! I really should try this – thanks for sharing! :)
Over Christmas I tackled my TBR in order to better organize my series. I ended up making a boatload of new shelves on Goodreads, but time will tell if that’ll be enough. If it’s not, I think I’ll try to do something like the spreadsheet you’ve got going here! It’s beautiful, in way that only spreadsheets can be :)
Oh my lord, Joséphine! You are so very organised. If I had the time and patience, i would actually love to do something like this because I know that there are SO MANY series that I have started and then never continued, or finished. I’d love to see them in such a spreadsheet, all organised and beautiful. But alas: it would require using excel and excel is my born enemy.
You can probably guess that I don’t have any way of keeping track of the series I have started, except my memory. Which is a pretty reliable source, but not all the time. Especially if I started the series a while ago.
I would actually really love to get a handle on my series, and finish some of them up. I don’t like the thought of having unfinished stories read in my head.
I wish I was as organized as you! I’ve been wanting to create spreadsheets to better keep track of my reading stuff, but I feel like I’m going to bail on it on the future haha. I probably have more than 10 series that are unfinished *sighs*. Hopefully I finish all of them someday, but it’s so hard to resist starting a new series!
I don’t keep track of my series but I wish I did. Once I get my Goodreads account until control I’ll think about tackling something like that.
I admire your spreadsheet skills. I could never do it. Technology does not agree with me. I think it’s easier for me to keep a track of my series, just because honestly, most are incomplete. So I just read as they come out and pretty much remember nothing of the book before. Horrible method, in some way, but it’s working so. This year I’m just going to read front list and continuing series tbh. NO TIME TO GO BACK :O
I’m pretty much on the same track as Jess. This though, is pretty darn amazing! Gotta love how organized everything is and I guess the beauty of Excel (and technology) is that you can easily migrate completed series over to another tab.
Exactly! I can’t imagine doing this manually on paper. I would never be able to finish it.
I love how you can tell true book lovers from average readers, we are the only ones that are worth the time to start a spreadsheet to keep everything in track! Great work :)
Missie @ A Flurry of Ponderings
Such a true observation! :D
I keep track of my series, but just by a list on Goodreads. My most recent count, I have started 127 series and haven’t completed them. I probably won’t finish all of them, but it’s still interesting to see.
I heavily rely on GR too to track my books but I just couldn’t figure out an effective shelving system to track all the series, so I resorted to Excel.
This is a really great idea! I have used spreadsheets before for keeping track of books (particularly, my classics and all the books I’m reading this year, categorized by certain themes so I can easily see how many POC/LGBT/Male or Female authors…I’ve read this year). I might be trying this one out too!
I’m happy to give you more data to track ;) My 2015 books spreadsheet is burgeoning with so much information that I want to track! Books I’ve read, priority TBR list, books I’ve bought, ratings, etc. Thankfully Excel makes it fairly easy to input all that data. Haha.
What a great idea to keep track of your series that way. I think I am reading more series then I can count and usually don’t track them except for adding the next book in the series to my to-read list on goodreads. I like the look of your spreadsheet!
I’ve been wanting to this for the longest time but couldn’t bring myself to get started on such a daunting task. But since I was playing around with Excel, trying to figure out some formulae and functions, I figured it was about time. Haha.
I also started this project last year called my ‘mission impossible’ and I’m on track, but still nowhere close with finishing every series. Most of them are because not every book is published, but I hope to finish at least 10 completely published series this year :)
HAHAHA. Mission impossible. That’s about right. But I refuse to be deterred ;) All the best to us!