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I am Lover of romance, who indulges in the romantic adventures of literature

My name is Renee, and I am the host of this site. I am a 34 year old woman, on the prowl for her mate, searching out the best of books, exploring the wilds of the imagination and delving into the heart of a beautiful love story.

 

Tea And Bisquits Book Discussions: Goodreads Organization

by | Jan 11, 2016 | Tea and Biscuits Discussions | 14 comments

While over the holidays, as I was recharging, and renewing for the start of the new year, one of my goals was to work on Goodreads more. When I first started my blog five years ago, is when I also discovered Goodreads. I used to spend all my spare time I could on it. I fell in love with it, and to this day I still love it but the past couple of years I have been neglecting it more than I would like. My shelves have definitely grown over the years, but I wanted to make a goal to clean up my shelves and reorganize them. The past few months I have seen a more frequent amount of articles in various ways to do this. I knew that I had to decide on my own way of organizing my shelves. I felt like this was pretty important, considering how much I rely on these shelves. I wanted to make it easier to find the books I wanted.

The past week I have been working on reorganizing my shelves and transferring my titles to those new and more organized shelves. There were certain shelves I was able to keep the same due to the process of the way I decided to organize my shelves. So I wanted to show you all my process to organizing my shelves. I am still in the process of completing it, but I have finished on the groupings of the various shelves. So I wanted to show what I have done with them.

So the first thing I did, was to rename my genre shelves. I wanted to relabel them so it was more organized. As you can see, I have a distinction under Genre. I have various head labels for each shelf name.

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My Next Head Label was under Characters. This has been so fun to do. For example if I am looking for a story where there are spies that the Main characters play then I can look it up quickly. Or I want to find were bears…..sea captains….or governess’s. I definitely have noticed a difference, because at times I am looking for a certain type of story with a character theme. As you can sese I don’t have many books yet under these, since these are all brand new and I am still attempting to reorganize all of my books. Which I know is a daunting task to take on, but will be so worth it in the end. As you notice, they are pretty detailed a bit. Which is what I was wanting to do.

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My next step was the time setting. I knew there were various ways in doing the labels for this. I was inspired by the list of time periods from Historical Romance Writers site. What I decided to do, was I wanted to organize it by various time periods of course. But I also wanted to organize it by location and the various era’s for each location. These labels are also brand new, but you can see the way I have organized these out.

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The next step I did, was deciding on a setting label. I love this one quite a bit, so that I can see what books I have organzied by locale. This is a great step to do, so that if your looking for a certain setting…you can quickly find what you are in the mood for.

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The next step to this process, was having generalized topics. This is a list of shelves, that are various terms of what I like to read.

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What I wanted to do next was to organize my books by Trope or also known as cliche. These labels are what bring a conflict to a story, or draw a couple together. I love tropes and I am still working on this a bit, but I realized that sometimes I like to look for a certain book with a theme. Whether it’s a kidnapping theme, second chance romance or those fun fairy tale retelling’s.

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The last thing I did was make a grouping of the publishing year. This can really help when you are looking for a certain year. I don’t have all the years of time listed hehe jeez that would take forever to do. No, I just have shelves that go back to ’97. Then I have a shelf for books published before that year. That way if I am looking for a older romance, I can find it where I can easily find it. Its a great way to work on those back listed books.

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The last thing I was able to do was get rid of my duplicates….which I don’t even know why I had those, or how that even happened, but I decided to get rid of those and clean up my shelves a bit. I wanted to do this before I started transferring all my books, that way I didn’t have to transfer duplicates as well.

I am a person that love being organized, so it only makes sense that I would do it with my Goodreads since I rely on it so much. So why is it so important to keep your shelves organized? The answer to this question is a very personal one. Each person is different in how they add books to their shelves. However if you are a organized person like myself, than this is very useful. It makes it much more efficient and its a great way to shelve your books.

Questions For My Readersย 

So what about you? What do you think about having ย your shelves organized on Goodreads?

If you are planning on reorganizing your Shelves—-which ways are you going to do it?

If you already have your shelves organized in your own way….how do you do it? I want to hear about it.ย 

 

 

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14 Comments

  1. Felicia The Geeky Blogger

    I have lots of shelves. Goodreads IS my online shelving system. If only my physical shelves could be that organized ๐Ÿ™‚

    Reply
  2. Bookworm Brandee

    Thanks so much for sharing how you’re re-organizing your GR shelves. This is something I’m planning on working at this year. I hate that my GR shelves aren’t as organized as my physical and digital shelves are. I’m not sure how I’m going to break down my categories but it’s nice to see how you did it as it gives me ideas on how to go about it. ๐Ÿ˜€

    Reply
  3. Quinn's Book Nook

    I REALLY need to organize my Goodreads shelves too. I started to a bit last year but then sort of stopped. When I first joined Goodreads I made my shelves like you find in a library. I have a J Fic, a Picture Book, Adult, YA shelves. I’ve expanded them a lot, but I think my shelves are too unruly now. I like how you have organized your shelves and I am so going to use some of these ideas!

    Reply
  4. LilyElement

    Whoa. *bows before you* I seriously need to do that, that’s genius ๐Ÿ˜€

    Reply
  5. Samantha

    This is great! I love how the header labels look for reading through the different shelves. It makes it so much easier for creating lists as well. I keep track of random things via my goodreads shelves. I should be more diligent about marking titles with certain tropes and stuff.

    Reply
  6. Karen

    I really only use Goodreads to catalogue what I’ve read – and I only break down as much as I need to (by month read/favorites for example). For genre, I only do YA, Adult, LGBT. I know my shelves aren’t too helpful for anyone else looking lol but they work for me and I’m always tweaking them a little.

    I like your trope category!

    Karen @For What It’s Worth

    Reply
  7. Blodeuedd

    WOW…OMg! You rock

    Reply
  8. kimbacaffeinate

    I am impressed. I have read, to read and audio. LOL

    Reply
  9. Lola

    Wow that’s impressive how you organized your shelves. I mostly keep track of if I own the book or not and where I own the book (physical copy, Kobo or ipad). I also have a shelf for books I toured with Lola’s Blog Tours. And whether I got a book for review and a shelf for books I got for review that I already have reviewed. Then I have a netgalley shelf and the normal 3 ones plus a DNF shelf and that’s it.

    I did make an historical romance shelf last year when I started reading that genre, but as I never really kept trakc of genre shelves, that’s hard to keep track of. It does seem handy to be able to organize them on genre. And the topics and trope, it seems you are able to find any type of book you’re looking for with those shelves! It all looks so organizing!

    I am nto sure if I ever will organzie my goodreads shelves as it’s so much effort and I have os many books and havign to shelf them all sounds like it will take ages. Oh and I added a shelf for books I lend recently when another blogger lend me a book and I realized I couldn’t shelf that.

    Reply
  10. Carole's Random Life

    I just love peeking at everyone’s Goodreads shelves. My are pretty boring and mostly just focus on some kind of reminder about what I books I need to read for review and when they are published. I love how organized you have set it up.

    Reply
  11. Sharonda

    This is pretty dang on awesome. I did a little re-organizing, I need to go back in do just a bit more. My books were all over the place and I removed books I know I was never going to read. I mostly seperated by Genre and what ever challenges I set myself up for. The shelves on GR are definitely a good way to keep your TbR list under control.

    Reply
  12. Bea @ Bea's Book Nook

    My goodreads shelves are not that detailed, lol. I have genres, reading challenges, year read, a shelf for books read, a shelf for books I’ve edited, a DNF shelf, etc. Goodreads is how I track books I own, want to own, and have read. I even have a wish list shelf. I’d be lost without goodreads.

    Reply
  13. Alyn Yang

    WOW! Mine is nothing like yours! My lists come down to Children’s Books, First Reads, and ebooks. Maybe I’ll go through them some day and organize them all. As for now, no thank you!

    Reply
  14. Stephanie @Once Upon a Chapter

    Right now my shelves are so disorganized it isn’t funny. For now my only goal is to get them on the right shelf (read, to read, or wish list), go through my duplicates, and determine if the book is a physical edition or an ebook. Once I get that back under control, I’ll think about getting more detailed! ๐Ÿ˜‰

    You are incredibly detailed! I’m glad that it works for you! I love looking at other people’s orginizational techniques. It gives me ideas on how I might implement them myself. ๐Ÿ™‚ Thanks for sharing!

    Reply

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