How I keep track of the insane amount of series I read
I LOVE reading series, way more than standalones. My wishlist is bursting with first books in series and I also have a huge amount of series I need to finish. My list currently consists of 221 series and I haven’t even added all the new series I discovered the past few months.
I’ve always preferred series to standalones and realized that I need to keep track of them somehow. That’s why I made my first spreadsheet a few years ago which I’ve been using ever since and only slightly changed over the years.
I’ve already shared it via twitter a couple of times and even provided people with an empty version, but I’ve made a few changes recently and wanted to share it again, in more detail.
(click it to see a bigger picture!)
I have a row for each series and they are sorted by author and then title of the series. Each book in a series gets a green field and then I can mark if I have read the book (X), if I own the book but need to read it (–) or leave it empty if I still need to get it/it’s not out yet.
With this I get some statistics on how many books I read, still need to read and how many series are on my wishlist!
I also color all the series I have finished in red and the ones I want to finish soon/this year are bold. For some of them I even took track of when they are going to be finished.
To get even more statistics I use the three columns on the left. The first indicates if I finished or DNF a series. The other two are for keeping track when I started and when I finished/DNF them (a year in brackets means I didn’t finish the series).
These are all the values I get from my spreadsheet:
- Number of series overall
- Number of series I finished and DNF
- Number of series that I’m currently reading (=at least read the first book)
- Number of series to start (= I own the first book but haven’t read it yet)
- Number of series on my wishlist
- Number of 1st, 2nd,… books in series I read and need to read
- Statistics on how many series I started and finished in specific years
I’ve always keeping track of my series like this (as in keeping track of every single book) and I never thought about changing it because it works perfectly for me this way. I only need to remember updating it regularly, which I mostly do at the end of each month.
Do you keep track of your series too? How do you do it?
Leave a Comment
Stephie
Eine Lesestatistik habe ich auch und ich liebe sie, aber so eine Statistik für Serien führe ich bisher nicht. Bisher habe ich das auch nicht vermisst, ich scheine das nicht zu brauchen. Die Serien habe ich ganz gut im Kopf und zur Not habe ich auf meinem Blog ja auch die Rezensionen sortiert nach Serien und da bekomme ich dann auch einen ganz guten Überblick.
Mel@thedailyprophecy
I love looking at spreadsheets. I recently did an update for my mission impossible. I really like your last stats table, with the overview of everything you finished/want to start etc. I’m still trying to get track of all the series I want to start, but that seems.. endless, haha.
Friedelchen
221 Serien?! Na kein Wunder dass du eine Liste brauchst :-D Ich habe halbwegs im Kopf, wo ich bei welcher Serie stehe, deshalb mache ich mir keine Liste. Aber bei mir sind es auch nicht über 200 :-P
Sebastian
“Insane amount of series” trifft es bei 222 Serien wohl recht gut :D
Ich hätte vor Jahren auch mal mit so einer Liste anfangen müssen, ich glaube kaum dass ich jetzt noch nachvollziehen könnte welche Reihen ich alle mal irgendwann angefangen habe und welche davon ich mittlerweile vergessen habe obwohl mir die Anfänge vielleicht sogar gut gefallen haben (und ich hoffe doch wirklich dass meine Zahl nicht annähernd so groß ist wie deine…)^^
Die Auswertung ist natürlich auch echt praktisch. Deine DNF-Quote bewegt sich ja auch noch in einem akzeptablen Rahmen, da scheinst du bei den Serien anscheinend nicht allzu oft daneben zu greifen ;-)
Ellie
Although I mostly use GR to track my series, I also have a spreadsheet which currently has 213 series listed but I haven’t updated it in a while. I also really need to improve it and add a couple more statistics and charts. I only include series of which I own at least one book. Since 2010, I also have a seperate spreadsheet each year on which I keep track of the series I started over the course of the year and the ones I need to finish from the years prior – I have about 150 series I need to finish and about 70 of which I already own the first book. The horror! I don’t know how I will ever get around of reading them all :D !
Sana // artsy musings of a bibliophile
Oh, this is fantastic! I joined FictFact last year but I don’t like the look of it so I’ve been thinking of making a page on my OneNote to keep track of all the series on my own.
I was confused about how I’d go about it and your layout makes a lot of sense. I already have most of the data so I think I’ll go for it soon. I think I’ve started about 90+ series in my life.
The last screenshot of all the values is really interesting, love the stats!
Lauren @ Lose Time Reading
I love this!! I am super addicted to spreadsheets but I had never thought about making one for my series (other than the challenges I am participating in), this is a great idea :)