I have many collections on my e-reader, most of them organized by month. As I've mentioned before, I schedule my reading for review by the month the book is released. If something is coming out late May or early June, it's in the “June 2013” folder, and if it's late June, early July, it goes in “July 2013.” I do this in case I get so excited about a book that is So Awesome OMG YAY, it won't be too early for me to write about it (I know it makes you bonkers if there's epic squee about a book that's not on sale yet) and it won't be so far in advance that by the time the book comes out, I don't remember what it was about (There was a dude…. and stuff happened? Yeah.)
Aside from the calendar folders, I have a few folders of books that live on my Kindle full-time. They're permanent residents of my reading collection, and if I can't figure out what to read next, I go diving into one of those folders and enjoy something I've already read, or pick out the next book in a series I'm trying to savor. Among my permanent resident folders: Kate Noble, Julie Anne Long's Pennyroyal Green series (I've picked up many of them on sale and am now trying to slowly read in order), and Patricia Briggs' Alpha/Omega series. I also have a “Historical Anytime” folder of historical romancees (obviously) that I've picked up on sale, and a “Novellas” folder of the same. If I'm mood reading, I often read historical romance.
What about you? Do you have books that live permanently on your e-reader? And if you don't read digitally, do you stash favorite books in secret locations just in case you are caught without a book to read? What books have permanent-resident status for you?
Right now, I have a lot of mysteries on my e-reader. In fact, I can make a journey from Santa Fe, to Skoga in Sweden and dash back in time to Boston in 1700’s. But I am changing the content regularily, since I read fast.
So next week it is probably containing a lot of paranormal romances and Urban Fantasy :).
I have folders for authors and also genres (or genre-ish).
An example of genres would be “Regency Reads” for my historical romances and “Racey Reads” for those books that have a little more edge to them. I also have a Mixed Fav’s, Paranormal, and TBR collection. I tend to rotate books through these folders but will always have something that I enjoy in them as a fall back.
Authors that rate their collections include GA Aiken/S Laurenston, Ilona Andrews, Laura Florand, Mercy Thompson (I know she’s a character not an author), NR, SE Smith and Witch Central / Debora Geary.
I find with that mix I always have something either new to read or fun to all back on. I know I don’t need to carry all my books with me, but given I can load up my kindle I like to have my favourites to hand.
I have folders by genre for: romance, mystery, sci-fi & fantasy, general fiction, non-fiction, childrens/YA, and then “keepers.”
If I haven’t read the book, it’s on the appropriate genre folder. Once I read it, if I doubt I’m going to re-read it, I move it to the cloud, and take it out of the folder. If I think I’m going to want to read it again, I move it to keepers.
Right now, Jennifer Crusie, Julie James, Carla Kelly, Nora Roberts, Kristin Higgins, and Jill Mansell all have several books on the keeper shelf, but I’ve got a few single/double titles, like Connie Willis’ Blackout/All Clear.
All of my favorite authors have their own “shelf” as it’s called on my nook. I haven’t really organized it beyond that though and I don’t usually take books off my nook. I have nearly 200 books on it and it’s only using a tiny fraction of the available space so why bother? My previous nook was a bit more organized but I haven’t taken the time to organize my current one more than the basics.
I just lost my nook tablet *sniff*
I’m not taking a lot of my nook, either. Mostly just the DNF stuff.
I have categories and a re-read shelf. I hadn’t done the author shelves, though that is a good idea.
I have a lot of mystery and a lot of romance, some chick lit, a fair amount of YA, some fantasy and scifi, some thrillers. I also love reading science and history, especially biography or autobiography, so I pick those up whenever I can find them on sale. I just finished Alison Arngrim’s Confessions of a Prairie Bitch, which is about her life as Nellie Oleson and beyond. It was excellent. She has a compelling voice and an interesting story.
No ereader, but I do have two thirds* of The Lord of the Rings stashed on my iPod in audio form. Great for when I find myself out and about and unexpectedly in need of reading matter.
*I will get round to ripping RotK at some point.
I love my Kindle fire! It’s populated with many of my keepers—especially Julie Garwood and Hannah Howell stories! I also have a lot of my own books so I can see what they look like to readers. 🙂
No organization to it, though. I have to tear the Kindle out of hubby’s hands all the time because he’s playing Words with Friends. Probably a good thing—it keeps me writing instead of reading.
I find searching and organizing on my Kindle to be too…clunky? I just don’t like it so I organize all my books in Calibre and that’s connected with Dropbox. That way I have access to all my books but I don’t have to search around on my Kindle. I tend to delete books off my Kindle once I’ve read and reviewed them.
I don’t delete books from my Kindle unless I really don’t like them. Everything I do keep is organized by genre/sub-genre, and some books are sorted into more than one category.
I can do this because I am the only romance reader in the world who has never had a TBR pile. I’m just too picky, I guess; there’s not enough that I really want to read.
My Nook is organized by author. I archive books I won’t get back to for awhile, otherwise everything just stays in the library. I don’t buy that many ebooks since we have such an awesome library system and I can get almost anything I want in a day or two. So the ones on the Nook are my “must have handy” books. Julie Garwood, Eloisa James, J.R. Ward, Seanan McGuire, (HAIL!), and Patricia Briggs are just a few. Jim Butcher’s Dresden files are in there too alone with Steig Larson and Carlos Ruiz Zafon. Oh, and Kim Harrison’s Hollows series. It’s a cornucopia of books that soothe my soul.
Sarah, this post was timely – I was searching for something in my Kindle Fire & got frustrated. I would love to be able to organize my books on K- Fire (1st gen). I’ve got marketing books and historical reference books all mixed in with my romance novels. I checked for the capability on Amazon, but ran into a brick wall. I would love to have instructions how to do that on K-Fire. Hoping someone here can help me out. Thanks in advance.
I’m a huge fan of Jenny Crusie and read and re-read her books all the time. I also enjoy Stephen King and still have the hardcopy version of The Shining that was my first Stephen King reading experience. I keep a lot of classics on my iPad (mostly because they’re free) like Twain, Austen, Bronte, Hawthorne, and Poe. Most of the time I check books out of the Metro Library, so I pretty much always have a book or two loaded up for new reads.
E-readers are such a cool thing. I remember in high school I always had gigantic novels in my backpack and frequently read them while walking from class to class. Now I can have hundreds of novels ready all the time, and keep my iPad with me wherever I go. Thank God for technology!
I really only keep to reads or in progress items on my ipad. Everything else lives in the cloud and gets downloaded on demand. I like to download anything new immediately- that way if I’m not into whatever I happen to be reading I at least look at my other purchases before I go buy a something else.
I’m kind of boring. I have a TBR file, a Next file for the stuff I want to get to soon, and a Read file. I also have a Freebies folder, because the free downloads were completely swamping my TBR. Now it’s much easier to purge the stuff that looked sort of interesting at the time, but that I’m realistically never going to read.
There are only two series that rate their own folders for me- Adrien English, because sometimes I need my Adrien and Jake, and The Rifter, because I can never seem to find the next installment if it’s allowed to float free with the rest of my books. It’s sneaky.
I read ebooks from Amazon on an iPad. Can you BELIEVE there is no way to sort the books? Either the iPad Kindle app was not designed by a reader or Amazon is determined to force my hand (and wallet) to a Kindle.
I haven’t organized collections on my Kindle, probably because I spend my work day working in organized folders on my computer; my psyche rejects doing the same at home. Kinda dumb of me, but…
As far as books that HAVE to be on my device, some are Not Quite a Husband (Sherry Thomas), The Duke of Shadows (Meredith Duran) and Untie My Heart (Judith Ivory).
Wow, y’all are so much more organized than I am. I have a “TBR” folder, a “Book Club” folder, and a “Favorites” folder on my Kindle. I’m in a couple of book clubs, so the upcoming books for those always get sent to the appropriate folder so they’re easy to find. I send all my cookbooks (and only my cookbooks) to my Kindle Fire because the interface is easier for cooking, but I don’t like reading on a backlit screen. I guess I need to organize my original Kindle a little better.
When I finish a book, if I loved it, it goes in the “Favorites” folder. If I liked it but didn’t love it, it gets sent to the cloud and deleted from the Kindle (obviously, the same goes for books I disliked). As far as the authors I keep permanently on the device, they include all my books by Courtney Milan, Caroline Linden, Darlene Marshall, Tessa Dare, Julie Ann Long, Sarah Mayberry, Georgette Heyer, Olivia Cunning, Susanna Kearsley.
There are also a few lone titles by other authors, but any of the above writers are pretty much guaranteed a spot in my “Favorites” folder.
I use my nook for library books, so there are no permanent residents. I do have some free ebooks that I’ve been given/downloaded, but once I’ve read them they live in a cloud so that it’s easy to find whatever I currently have out.
So that’s straightforward, but organizing my library hold shelves takes an inordinate amount of time.
@Vicky: Unfortunately there is not a “collections” capability on the Fire like there is on the Kindle e-Ink devices – which is so completely awful and crappy.
There are apps like this one: http://amzn.to/18FT270 that are about $2.99 or so, and create collections, but they are separate from the Kindle app itself, and you use the new app to sort and read your books. Some users adore it, and others have reported frustrating experiences when the app doesn’t work.
There’s a thread at Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/forum/kindle?cdForum=Fx1D7SY3BVSESG&cdThread=Tx2VA4ID41URBAI) wherein people are still bummed that there is no collections option for any of the Fires – which, I agree with them, is really dumb.
I’m sorry I can’t be of more help!
Sarah, thanks for letting me know and for the link. Sigh…. There may be another device in my future.
I’ve only ever deleted two books from my Kindle – everything else stays. That’s over four hundred books organized in collections (although I might need to break out my historicals into further subcategories since I have 160 of those alone).
I’ve started a collection just for those books that I love to reread: Austen, Austenland (hee!) and Deborah Harkness’s two paranormals. . . .
So far, pretty much everything stays on my kindle but I have a feeling that may change in the future. I create folders for favorites authors (Duran, Thomas, Milan and Julie Ann Long) because I know I will end up buying a lot of their books. Everything else is pretty unorganized.
I’m looking for new authors, so I will definitely be checking out Kate Noble.
@Meri I don’t have a TBR pile either. I read too much and books are expensive!
I’m not very organized on my Kindle, but I have folders for Nora Roberts, J.D. Robb, Candace Camp, and Karen Rose as well as a Christmas books folder. Before Hurricane Sandy I had a book case in my bedroom and I grouped books by author/series, so I had an In Death shelf, an Alison Brennan shelf, two shelves of Nora Roberts, 1/2 a shelf for Karen Rose, a Harry Potter shelf, and the rest were miscellaneous books that didn’t fit anywhere.
I have my Kindle divided up by sub-genre: Highlanders (I love men in kilts, sigh), Regency, Other Historical, Romantic Suspense. I break up contemporaries by tropes: Billionaires, Cowboys, Humor, etc. Anything I finished and keep goes into a ‘read’ folder.
Currently I have 5 collections:
TBR
Favorites
Heyer
Read
DNF
My favorites folder is getting a bit full, so I’m considering breaking out a few authors into their own category (i.e. Chase, Kinsale), but I don’t really like having too many folders.
When I replaced my last kindle my collections didn’t transfer over so a lot of my “favorites” are still in the cloud. Once I sort that all out, I may get rid of the “Read” folder, and just move the non-favorites off my device. DNF’s I tend to keep just as a reminder of the books I really didn’t like. Luckily there aren’t that many in there!
I usually keep books on my Sony e-reader until I’m through reading them, then I delete them. I have too many paper books to mention my favorites, but they would be Gone with the Wind, Tale of Genji, and any Asian male/white female romances.
I keep all of my ebooks on my nook; I’m definitely one of those people who likes to have access to all of my books all the time. I don’t organize them, I just know what’s there. I guess I may need to start a TBR shelf, since that pile keeps growing and growing.
I’m finding these various methods of organizing one’s e-reader so interesting. Right now, all I’ve got going on are genre folders where I’ve put stuff I’ve already read. Everything To Be Read is loose, in order of download to my Kindle, because with me, out of sight is out of mind, alas. I’ve only deleted a few things, ‘cause they were *awful*, but maybe will need to reconsider my storage methodology as more stuff gets downloaded.
At the mo, the majority of reads are romances by fellow indie writers, as I want to support them and, often, their stuff’s available in electronic format only.
Funny that this post just came out. I discovered my e-reader had a cracked screen last weekend (*sob*), so needed to get a new one. My Kobo Glo arrived in the mail Saturday, and after getting all 300 ebooks I had onto it (thank you Calibre), I began organizing. First, I marked off all the books I had read, then went through calibre to mark where the books had come from (after finding duplicates of a couple). Yesterday, I discovered that the Glo has shelves/collections features that weren’t on my broken e-reader, which I immediately took advantage of. I have a book club shelf, favorites, novellas and short stories, and a few shelves for authors I discovered through forums I participate in. Today I decided that I need to organize by when I read them (2013, 2012, 2011/prior).
The fun part of organizing/reorganizing is if I can’t remember reading it, it is a good excuse to read it again.
My Kindle folders are coded 😉
“White Ravens” (historical romance)
“Trashy Classics” (contemporary romance)
“Hi-fi” (historical fiction)
“Sexfiction”
“Pirate Vampires in Space”(PNR, Nalini Singh mostly)
“Waiting room”
and
“Director’s Cut” – a separate category for Diana Gabaldon’s „Outlander” (which I can’t seem to finish).
I only wish there were sub-folders avaialble on my Kindle…
I have a number of authors I keep all of their books readily available on my Sony. All of my JD Robb/Nora Roberts, Shannon Stacey, Jayne Ann Krentz/Amanda Quick/Jayne Castle, Meg Benjamin, Merline Lovelace, Cindy Gerard, Lori Borrill, Christine Feehan (GhostWalkers, Drake Sisters/Sea Haven/Leopards), Alissa Johnson, Julie Miller, Carla Neggers, Nalini Singh, Eve Silver/Eve Kenin, Karen Templeton, and Linda Turner books are permanently on my device.
Other authors like Marie Ferrarella and Jill Shalvis I just keep my favorites on my reader and move ones I am unlikely to reread to my secondary Calibre library (called Calibre Vault). And then I have authors where all of their books are in the secondary library and I only have them on my reader until I have read them.
My libraries are large enough now that if I know I will never reread a book (and it isn’t a book in a series I just didn’t like), I delete the books completely.
I like having books by favorite authors, particularly books in a series, readily available.
I love how Calibre allows me to tag books the way I want and puts tags and series names as collections on my Sony. I don’t use custom columns or tags like unread and keep my TBR “pile” in Word. I limit myself to specific tags. Every book is tagged as Contemporary, Historical, Futuristic, Time Travel, or Fantasy and then I also add Paranormal, Novella, Anthology, Christmas/Hanukkah, and series (Silhouette Intimate Moments, Harlequin Temptation, Loveswept, etc) as applicable. For freebies like the stories posted at Harlequin.com or Nalini Singh’s short stories in her Psy/Changeling series, I also have an Online Read tag. And that’s it.
months85 (yes, it would take me 85 months to read all of the books on my Sony including the books I have already read in print and bought in digital because they were on sale and I just had to buy them in digital)
Well, it was before I was sent to cannot comment jail. Thanks for the tech help Sarah!
There are several authors that I turn to regularly. Teresa Medeiros has several books I run to over and over. Julia Quinn is my go-to romance author for fun stories and great heroes. Karen Marie Moning is my all-time favorite for her Highlander and Fever series. Her stories are super-sexy, fun, with strong heroines and brawny kick-ass Scottish heroes (one’s even a berserker for God’s sake). As for non-romance, Stephen King and Louis L’Amour each have a permanent shelf on my booklist, digital or otherwise.