Source
r/books•
Cartinelli

If you keep a digital book journal, what do you use?

This Lent I'm making it a goal to read more books, and while I love the highlight feature on my Kindle, I'd love to keep a book journal/commonplace book for notes and quotes.

Ideally, for me the app would have to include the following:

  • A main category for books, followed up by separate notebooks/folders/categories for each book
  • Tagging, so I can keep track of genres, themes, etc.
  • Cross-platform.
  • Backup
  • Ability to export into pdf or some printable format
  • I'd prefer free or at the very least a one-time purchase, but beggars can't be choosers, so at least minimal cost.

For my needs I think OneNote or EverNote will be the best idea, but I'm wondering if anyone uses something else that I haven't tried.

Posted Feb 19, 2018, 11:36 PM UTC

617
ProteusFinnertyWar w/ the Newts•

I've been using Libib.com for over a year now to keep track of my book and movie collections, but haven't made great use of their reviews feature. I do use their tags, but I'm not sure how well they sort by genre. I like that they do provide library calll # support, both for Dewey and LC classifications.

7
CartinelliOP•
  • Catalog up to 100,000 items
  • Cloud sync
  • Mobile app (iOS and Android)
  • Beautiful statistics
  • Connect and share with others
  • Publish a list of your items
  • Create online reviews
  • Import / export your collection
  • Keep detailed notes
  • Tagging, grouping, basic editing

So this, this seems perfect. Thank you!

4
FRAU_VON_HITLERPANTS•

Sounds like a data miner's wet dream.

3
ProteusFinnertyWar w/ the Newts•

All that's in the free version, too! (The paid version lets you loan and create loaning accounts, as well as adding some export options.)

2
CartinelliOP•

The only thing I'm concerned about is that it only exports in .csv, so I don't know how well that would export notes, but I'm going to try it out and see how it works. I definitely don't need anything as extensive as the pro features, so I'm glad the free version seems so robust.

2
ProteusFinnertyWar w/ the Newts•

Please share your findings! (No rush, though.) I've had very good experience wit their support team, so feel free to reach ou to them if you have ideas/problems/suggestions.

1
sillycatbear•

http://www.goodreads.com/ might be good for tracking what you've read and setting a reading goal

5
CartinelliOP•

Goodreads is great, don't get me wrong, but to me it has a lot of cruft I just don't need. I guess it may sound weird but I don't want book recommendations, book reviews, the social aspects... I know I don't have to use any of those things, but I want something that has a relatively simple interface that has nothing but the books I'm concentrating on. I hope that makes sense.

3
clickybang•

Have you taken a look at librarything? It's a website that lets you sort things into collections and add tags etc. I'm not sure about notes though.

1
CartinelliOP•

I love LibraryThing as a basic catalog, but it doesn't offer the notes/quotes feature I'm looking for. It'd be nearly perfect if it did.

2
HereComesTheNarwhal4•

I like goodreads for the tracking features too, but i definitely get where you're going with this. I could do without the social aspects and the UI isn't amazing.

1
mdunagan•

You could look into Airtable. It’s a spreadsheet web app that also has mobile apps. It is super versatile and should suit your needs. Just take a look at some of the templates (that one is specific to books) and read up on how you can use it.

3
CartinelliOP•

Huh, I never thought of using a spreadsheet for something like that. It seems like Airtable would be perfect to keep a running list of books I want to/have read, but I don't know about incorporating quotes and such. I'll definitely explore it more though.

1
clickybang•

OneNote is the first thing that comes to mind. Are you going to be using it primarily on a desktop? I've found ON is frustrating to use on mobile.

If you try it, I'd recommend getting the free 2016 desktop edition rather than the UWP version from the Windows Store - the 2016 has more features at the moment.

3
CartinelliOP•

I have tried OneNote; the frustrating thing about it is that it's not very user-friendly in terms of cross-platform. Like you said, it's frustrating on mobile, and OneNote online doesn't have all the features that desktop OneNote has. For my use case though, it might be the closest thing I've got.

1
saladfork3•

The free software Calibre might be an option. It's primarily used for organizing ebook libraries, but you can manually add entries for your physical books. It supports tagging, ratings, custom identifiers, it's cross-platform, supports backups and exporting your library as a CSV spreadsheet file, and it's totally free and open-source.

(Personally I just keep a list of books I've finished in my physical, paper journal)

3
CartinelliOP•

I have Calibre, I never thought about using it to keep track of what I've read, etc. I'll definitely give it a look.

I like the idea of a paper journal the best, to be honest, but the way I want to organize things isn't conducive to paper, I think.

2