Keeping Track Of Book Series’

Keeping Track Of Book Series’

My favorite type of books are books that are apart of a series. Why? Well, I think that it allows us to get to know the characters and world better, and become more apart of it.

But sometimes it seems like authors and publishers make it extremely difficult to follow a series in order. A post by Jennifer from Little Shelf got me to really thinking about this some more.

I’m a big read-a-series-in-order-only kind of girl. I refuse to read them out of order. If a book later in a series looks good, I start from the beginning. Even if there isn’t really much of a continual storyline throughout the series, it helps a lot when characters from previous books pop up later on. I think it makes the world more dynamic and interesting, and overall makes the books more enjoyable.

So I’ve decided to write down for you guys, my own personal method for keeping track of series’ I’m following. I know it’s not necessarily genius or anything, but it took me a little while to figure out what works best for me, and this does!

I use a combination of Goodreads and FictFact mostly. The reason for this is because, as of now, Goodreads doesn’t really have a good way to keep track of a series other than their {much loved} series pages. The problem is that they don’t notify me when there’s a new book in a series I’m following.

On the other hand, FictFact is really only good for keeping track of a series, not so much rating/reviewing and there is virtually no community there at all. The downside to FictFact is that their lists are not always up-do-date, and they don’t always include novellas/anthologies that are part of a series. That’s where still checking back to the Goodreads series pages every once in a while can be a good idea.

But the big thing that FictFact does that we want is they will send you a weekly email letting you know if new books have been added to the series you follow and if there are books from the series you follow coming out this week. This is the main reason FictFact is apart of my system.

Here’s a quick rundown of my process when I’m working on catching up on a series:

1. I add the first book in a series to my Goodreads (GR) “to-read” shelf. I don’t bother adding all of the series until I’ve started it and know I want to continue.
2. When I start the first book in a series, I create a GR shelf called “series-title-of-the-series”. I add all the books from that series to this shelf so I can easily check back to see what’s next and what I have left to read before I’m current.
3. Then I go into my FictFact (FF) account and add the series to my “Catching Up” list. More on my FF lists later.
4. As I’m reading the series, I mark off the book on FF as read, and rate/review it on GR, as well as here on my blog.
5. When I’m caught up on a series, I delete the series shelf on GR so I don’t have a million series shelves on there, and I add the next one in that series to my “to-read-coming-soon” shelf (I order that shelf by Date Published btw). Now, I can keep an eye on the next one in the series but don’t need to have an entire shelf for it.
6. I also move that series to the “Current” list on my FF account, since I’m current on it now!

As for my FictFact lists. These are the only lists I have on my FictFact account. I don’t bother shelving them as detailed as I do on my Goodreads account, because there’s really no point to.

• Done – Series’ that are supposedly done (according to the author) but I want to keep an eye on just in case they come back from the grave (hey, it’s happened before).
• Current – Series’ that I’ve read all of the books in, up until the most recent one that hasn’t come out yet.
• Catching Up – Series’ I’m working on catching up on.
• On Hiatus – Series’ that I am putting on hold (temporarily or indefinitely-ish) because I’m not really into them at the moment.
• Starting Next – Series’ that I have the first one on hold at my library or on order and will be starting when I get them.

So that’s pretty much it. I know it sounds a bit crazy, but it’s really an easy system for me. The combination of using FictFact and Goodreads just works and I truly hope that one day they join forces or Goodreads comes up with a similar way (at least an email notification or something) to follow a series.

So how do you keep track of the series’ you like to follow?