How I Organize My Goodreads Shelves

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[@jennykate10]

Learning that i could make an exclusive dnf shelf was life changing because i was so glad i could mark dnf rather than just pretending it never happened or slightly lying and put read. I still am terrible at dnfing books but i think that mostly because I've been enjoying what im reading. I have a ridiculous amount of shelves but i think i enjoy cataloging them. Having a owned and owned tbr shelf is really useful

[@cristinagirlinthepages9029]

This has inspired me to do a bit of tidying up of my Goodreads shelves as well! You're right, just dumping everything on that "want to read" shelf is really overwhelming! I love the idea of that shelf just being top priority reads and have you have your "Top 40" within that!

[@LisaSmith-ql4jk]

I love the way you organized, especially the want to read and consideration. Definitely going to borrow this idea.

[@MerrilyKristin]

Yay!

[@alexalovesbooks]

YAY FOR A VIDEO ABOUT ORGANIZING YOUR GOODREADS SHELVES! As we’ve talked about many times before, it’s always therapeutic and a total habit to keep my Goodreads shelves organized. Loved hearing about how you decided to clean up your shelves! You already know how mine are 😉

[@MerrilyKristin]

I do! I love when we do random Goodreads cleanups together

[@LittleBrightLittleMoody]

What a cool system! I only have my read, want to read, and currently reading shelves. This seems like a really great system though! I should take a look at how to implement it for myself. ☺️

[@victoriaoneal1633]

Love waking up on my birthday to a new video from you! This honestly was so helpful thank you so much!!!

[@MerrilyKristin]

Ahhh happy birthday!!! I hope you have the best day!!!

[@Martin-xp5yl]

I didn't realise you could create exclusive shelves! This a game-changer, thanks for the tips! :)

[@OnTheMiddleShelf]

I love the way you organize your tbr/want to read books. I'm definitely going to be using some of your methods!

[@1Road2Success]

This was really helpful!!! I’m getting back into Good Reads and this gave me some ideas on how to set my shelves back up. I really like the idea of adding the year along with the topic on the bottom shelves. Thanks for sharing!

[@Kaivijs]

So guess what I will be doing this evening! I have the standart set up, but I really love some of the shelfs that you have.

[@92silviapi]

Really inspirational! Thanks for the video. I especially like the way you organized your "want-to-read", "consideration" and "tbr-unreleased" shelves. Every now and then I will come up with a new shelf I want to create to organize everything but it eventually ends up in chaos again! I really think your system might work for me so I'm going to incorporate a couple of your shelves and hope I can get my procrastination-lover-self to keep everything tidy! haha

[@MerrilyKristin]

Thank you!! I've found that this system seems to keep me very organized since I'm always excited to update it!

[@melissakate111]

I 100% love the idea of the ‘consideration’ shelf. I always look at my want to read shelf and it overwhelms me when I see its at like 140+ books, but having that consideration shelf will help me break down the books I definitely want to read and other ones that I’ll considering reading one day :) thanks for the idea!

[@janyneroberts]

I love the way you organize your shelves, I'm definitely stealing some ideas. Now you make me want to listen to an audiobook, drink my cup of coffee, and finally organize my goodreads shelves.

[@lexie_winner]

this is so helpful ♥

[@tifftargaryen490]

I use to be so bad about goodreads but I took everything off and started over and I love it.

[@homenovus701]

Ok, now I'm super discouraged at the utter lack of order to my Goodreads shelves. I'm definitely stealing your ideas for my own organization. Great overview of how and why you arrange your books.

[@lydiawalker0714]

I made four exclusive shelves for my Goodreads: to be read no yet owned, borrow before buying (for online library books), dnf, and incomplete (for books I started but put down for later). The rest is organized by genre, publication year (from 2017 forward), and any other special content like poc authors and mental health books.

[@WildeBookGarden]

YES I always have a Goodreads tab open too! oooh Graceling is great, so excited for you to get to that one! and the Lumatere Chronicles too! really liked seeing your organization. I'm the same where seeing progress and trackers change is so satisfying! I also love using shelves for specific challenges I want to do throughout the year. Like I have one for all the books I want to read for the 2019 Retelling Bingo Challenge so if I'm looking for something to read but don't have a clear idea of what I want to pick up, I can look through my tbr/challenge shelves and see if there's anything there I'm in the mood for. It's really helping me keep on track with some of those!

[@MerrilyKristin]

I have no idea how I've gone so long without reading Graceling at this point! I like the idea of challenge shelves!

[@romantiqpretzel]

Thank you so much for sharing your method of organizing! Definitely going to implement some of this for myself. My "Want To Read" shelf has a lot of books on it and it does kind of feel overwhelming 😬

[@j.n.cahill1086]

My Want to Read was really overwhelming (over 3000 books) so I started paring it down a couple of years ago. I am still whittling it down but I am to 300ish books now and I move books I am still interested in to my OWN-tbr shelf if I own them, my Kindle-tbr shelf if I have the ebook, TBR-Consideration if I am somewhat interested but not 100% sold on it and then TBR shelves by genre (tbr horror-thriller-mystery, tbr-ya-contemporary, tbr nonfiction, tbr classics, etc). I am thinking once I get my Want to Read to 0 I may go back to my separate TBRs and further separate them. I also have a wishlist TBR for books I want to buy or get from the library, as well as my own shelf. I also have a favorites & childhood favorites shelf. To make it easier to see how many books I have read per year, I also have a shelf for each year I started (2014 and beyond). So everything I am reading this year goes under 2019 reading list. That way I can see the numbers at a glance and see how the years compare. I also have a group reads and buddy reads shelf to keep up with those books. I like the idea you have of ordering them by number and series to finish. Thanks for sharing yours!

[@AlexandraTejero]

Really useful video, thank you!!!

[@FCBGiulia]

I love how you organize your Goodreads .

[@lilacchocolate]

This was a major revelation, I thought Goodreads was a website only for books you've already read. Definitely going to start up my own account now 📚😍 I can finally convert my bookmarked wishlist into something more visual! 😄

[@MerrilyKristin]

Ahh I hope you enjoy it! You're lucky to get to start now with a clean slate!

[@livingasareader8252]

This was very interesting to see all of your methods! On my Goodreads, I keep track of all the books I want to read through genre. For example, my contemporary shelf has around 70 books because that’s all I’ve been reading lately 😂 Loved this video :)

[@utoldschoolphenom]

Have you done a video on how to annotate or take notes for books? I feel like your methods always work so well for me!

[@Kayla-rj9lr]

I use "Want To Read" as the books on my physical TBR shelves at home. Then I have an exclusive "DNF" shelf, so my DNF books can't also be read. I just got rid of my Unhaul shelf today bc it got too complicated to have books that I bought and didn't read with books that I read or possibly DNF'ed and then unhauled. Then I have an exclusive "want-this-book" shelf with all my most anticipated releases and most interesting backlist books with only 19 books there. And I have a "Maybe" shelf for new releases and backlist books that sound kinda interesting or I need someone else to review them as consideration, with 67 books there. And then I have a nonexclusive "favorites" shelf and "non-fiction" shelf, for non-fiction I have read and fit into that genre.

[@MerrilyKristin]

I like the want this book shelf idea!

[@BedtimeBookworm]

I love how you have yours organized! I love organizing my GR 😆 I’m currently working on getting my want to read down to 100 too - it’s gotten way bloated over the years! Still got a ways to go but I’ve been making progress on it

[@MerrilyKristin]

That's fantastic! You'll get it down to 100! I also love organizing my goodreads. It's probably one of my favorite ways to procrastinate lol.

[@Feyazzz]

In case you didnt know.. the release date for Queen of Nothing is now 2019 instead of 2020. It‘s currenty on your 2020 shelf. Thanks for sharing your organzation methods. I really feel like cleaning up my goodreads now ♥️

[@hollywood_consumer]

Loved this! I like the idea of having genre/topic specific shelves, and then just moving things over when you're getting ready to read them. Keeps things a little more organized I bet. I keep my shelves pretty basic (Want to Read, Currently Reading, Read). One thing I do keep track of is all the things I haven't yet read or own that are available at my local libraries. I love that Goodreads has a function that shows you what library a book is at. I call that my "Charge it to my Library Card" shelf :)

[@MerrilyKristin]

Oh wow! I had no idea they had that feature! That's incredibly useful!

[@emilybannon1943]

I’ve been thinking about organizing my goodreads shelf and this definitely helped. I have a lot on my TBR so I think having a want to read being smaller and then others is great. I think I’m going to do a TBR own shelf so I read the books I own first and then therefore see if I want to keep it as I have very limited shelf space.

[@MerrilyKristin]

A TBR-owned shelf is a great idea! I keep a spreadsheet of my book collection by shelf so I can keep track of how many unread books I have!

[@Imaginetheday1967]

Thanks for sharing! I immediately took your idea of an unreleased exclusive shelf. :) I'm considering some of your others. I have all of my owned tbr (over 500 books) on goodreads, so my "to read" shelf is HUGE. I've been considering different ways of reducing that, and I like your method. A change would be a big commitment, so I need to think about it more, but I do like your method.

[@MerrilyKristin]

Thank you! And good luck if you decide to make the change!

[@shelleylawrence8397]

Do you keep track somewhere of books you own, but haven’t read yet?

[@MerrilyKristin]

Yes! I have a spreadsheet where I keep track of my book collection!

[@shelleylawrence8397]

Super Space Chick What all do you have on it? Just title and author? Thanks.

[@kylokingsley1299]

Pro trick : watch movies at kaldrostream. Me and my gf have been using it for watching all kinds of movies recently.

[@tripplorenzo8452]

@Kylo Kingsley yea, have been watching on KaldroStream for months myself :D

[@fletcherpeyton1963]

@Kylo Kingsley Definitely, have been using kaldrostream for since december myself =)

[@LuminousLibro]

Love the way you organize things! I'm going to have to redo my GoodReads. My shelves are a little chaotic right now. 223 unread messages?!? Dang girl, check your messages. haha! That's so funny.

[@MerrilyKristin]

Lollll I'm so bad at checking messages

[@martamorrison2828]

I don't organize on Goodreads but have a journal that I use to do what you do. I may start doing it on Goodreads.

[@MerrilyKristin]

I love journaling as well! Since I'm a mood reader, I like to use Goodreads since it's so easy to rearrange things as my mood changes!

[@booksvsmovies]

I deeply relate to wanting to minimize your anxiety about your tbr shelf. I have a similar system of delineating various tbrs. I use the Goodreads Want to Read shelf as my owned and unread tbr and keep a Google Doc with my considerations. In January 2020 I'll look through my considerations a decide which one's I'm getting and which ones I'm not. I've had a Goodreads account for 6 years and I only figured out I could make exclusive shelves 5 months ago. I'm not very intense in terms of shelving but I do like keeping my DNFs on an exclusive shelf because it feels weird for me to put them with my read books. I love how specific your different shelves are. I probably wouldn't be able to keep track of that many but I've slowly started separating my books into different genres. I haven't fully decided how I want my shelves to be but this video gave me some good ideas.

[@MerrilyKristin]

I like the way you handle your consideration books!

[@officialxraineedayze]

First of all, that shirt, I'm LIVING for it. ♡ I'm in the process of creating more organized shelves on GR, specifically for series books, manga and graphic novels. But the android app is limited so I have to make time on my computer for deep organization lol

[@MerrilyKristin]

Thank you! I always do deep organization in a browser too. I tend to really only do reading updates on mobile!

[@thediaryofabookaholic]

this makes me want to organize my shelves on good reads right now it a little bit of a mess with little order

[@BrightnessKatyReads]

Wow you're so organised haha! I got so exicted when I saw keeper of the lost cities on your want to read - I've currently just finished the 4th book in that series and i'm loving it. The characters are so loveable and the plot is really complex for middle grade, also the family and friendships are 100%. Also I'd highly reccomend mistborn era 2 - it's definetly a different tone (much lighter) from the first 3 but they are still really good and a lot more fun and also Wax (the mc) is basically Batman haha. Plus some characters do make cameos from era 1 ;)

[@MerrilyKristin]

Omg I cannot wait to read Keeper of the Lost Cities! As soon as I heard there were elves, I bought the whole series lol! I'm also really looking forward to getting to Mistborn era 2, but I think I want to tackle Warbreaker and Stormlight Archive first! But Batman?! YES PLEASE.

[@BrightnessKatyReads]

@@MerrilyKristin Warbreaker is so good!!! I think it's my fave Sanderson book, although it's slower paced and more political than the others!

[@MerrilyKristin]

@@BrightnessKatyReads Then it sounds like it has potential to be one of my favorites as well! So far Well of Ascension is my favorite for exactly that reason!

[@DarkMistyDay]

You're pretty much my organization soulmate :) As far as my book ratings though I stopped using Goodreads and just keep track of them in a word doc. I have a lot of reasons for discontinuing to use it but now with the word doc I just have a section for what I want to read each year specifically, then a section of just "to read (at some point)" then a list of what I've read each year in the order I read them and my rating out of 5. If it's something like an art book that I can't really rate then I just put whether or not I enjoyed it in place of a rating.

[@MerrilyKristin]

Interesting! I used to keep all of my read books listed in an iPhone note (back in 2012!) but I'm so glad I made the switch. I almost lost everything in my note once and I never wanted that to happen again! I also agree that not every book needs a rating- sometimes I feel that way with certain manga series!

[@AneeqaAwal12]

Amazing video! I've been trying to find the perfect way to organise my shelves for so long. I think I've finally found it! Thank you!❤️ For the non-exclusive shelves, after the year ends, will you be deleting those? Or will you go on doing the same for 2020 and keep all of them?🤔

[@MerrilyKristin]

I always delete the yearly shelves once the year passes! I keep a spreadsheet throughout the year with in depth reading stats so I consider those to be my archive of reading years past and focus on the current year on goodreads!

[@preethijoseph9700]

When you add a book from your read shelf to another one say " Top Favorites" then does it remove it from the Original shelf (read) in that case wont it affect the reading challenge update count

[@georgiefarr1094]

I did try to use Goodreads but at the time at the beginning of 2019 but I don't it's for me. I do however want to use Goodreads in 2020, so I can keep track of my reading goals 👍👍👍

[@MerrilyKristin]

I hope it works for you when I try again!

[@JayGTheAwkwardBookworm]

So many messages omg 😂

[@rebekahmackenzie]

I have a shelves dedicated to books I want to buy and the books I own

[@HylianDreamer]

I think I'm going to add in your "consideration" shelf idea. It will help limit the number on my want to read shelf. I strive to keep my want to read shelf under 300 books but I've been having lingering around that max number for a handful of months now. I hate deleting books that I think I'm still interested in because I really, really feel accomplished when I read a book that has been added to the shelf years ago (I started using Goodreads in 2012 and even still have a few left added from that year unread). Sure, maybe it doesn't look that great that I claimed to want to read it 7 years ago and STILL haven't read it, but I am a terribly moody reader. Also, when I do remove a book that I think I lost interest in, I end up checking it out from the library randomly or the author comes out with a new book that I like so I want to go back to read their old... etc. Then I'm just sad I didn't get to save that original added date.

[@MerrilyKristin]

I feel the similarly and I'm also a HUGE mood reader!

[@deniseb292]

Hi silly question, I know how to create a shelf under my tbr section, but how are you able to create another exclusive shelf?

[@MerrilyKristin]

Not silly! Click on my books, then in the top left corner next to bookshelves, click edit. Once that page loads, the fourth column gives you the option to make a shelf exclusive!

[@deniseb292]

Super Space Chick Thanks 😊

[@raeksince8397]

hi, I noticed recently that your goodreads shelves are a little different now. I was wondering how you edited your default exclusive shelves. more specifically, I want to ask how you made the ‘Read, Currently Reading, Want to Read’ shelves all lowercase. I have been trying to figure out how to do it for the longest time but no luck. I would really appreciate if you could help me out.

[@MerrilyKristin]

Hi, I'm so sorry, but I'm not really sure! When I look at 'My Books' want to read, currently reading and read are all capital, but when I look at my profile page, they're lower case. It might be the same for you- I think it's just how goodreads displays them and isn't anything that can be done on the users end to change it :-/

[@ashleemarie9939]

I dont read a lot of non-novel books...so can you explain to me what the difference is between a graphic novel and a manga?? And where do comic books fit into that realm lol

[@MerrilyKristin]

Sure! A comic book is a single issue of a story, typically released monthly. A graphic novel is a collected edition of a complete story arc of comic books, usually collecting 4-6 issues and sometimes including bonus content. Manga is essentially a Japanese comic that's read from right to left and a volume of manga also typically collects 4-6 issues of a story (the single issues are usually published in monthly Japanese magazines).

[@NarutoUzumaki-nc5vs]

I have a Tracker App and I DNFd The Chronicels of the Celts its not even close to Celtic Mythology. So I Reccomend Celtic Myths and Legends the Illustrated one.

[@annastanczyk4162]

I think my shelves need cleaning so ofdf I go.