The Reading Challenge Group discussion

Do you use the Goodreads "bookshelf" feature, creating your own bookshelf tags to keep your books organized? Aside from "read" and "to-read", what is your biggest Goodreads bookshelf?

I use it, but I started out making my tags too general, and now instead of keeping me organized they're getting overly full and hard to search through. I need to do an overhaul at some point.

My biggest is british-literature, at 149 books. I seem to be somewhat addicted to the Brits!

I do sometimes but not all the time and I think My biggest shelf is read.

Yes, I use them. My biggest bookshelf is "wishlist"!

dely wrote: "Yes, I use them. My biggest bookshelf is "wishlist"!"

LOL That's a good one to have!

My biggest shelf of read books is detective fiction.
But my tbr shelf is huge.

No, I stick to the regular ones. My TBR is my biggest shelf (around 300 books).

Not really, but it's a good idea to organize many of my to-read :) I have some challenges folders, including some I am saving to read next year haha
I hadn't really considered the feature, I tried it on Kindle but it became more a hassle than a help as it was easier just to keep a few on my carousel instead of navigating disappearing side bars lol

Tags are a great idea. I don't use it here but I have been tracking books on Excel, which allows quick filtering by Author, rating, or genre.

Yes, I love the "bookshelf" feature. My most filled bookshelf is childrens-read-to at 239. These are the books that I enjoyed reading to my four kids. The classics shelf is at 176. I would think my crime/thriller/espionage bookshelves would have the numbers, but maybe I have them broken down to much.
This feature really helps locate my books and I seem to keep adding new shelves.

I use the bookshelf feature for challenges, but not much else. I find them really helpful for the challenges. My biggest shelf is my TBR at 553.

Too many tags overwhelm me.

Aside from the read, currently reading, and to read standard shelves, I only have two bookshelves for personal use: 'favorites' and 'book-of-the-month' (which is just books that one of my other groups has read. I've committed to picking 1 of their 2 books each month to read). Every other bookshelf is just for goodreads challenges.

Though I admit I would be interested in seeing where the books I truly read fall under, I just never saw the point of making shelves by genre.

Being new to GR, I started off by only having tags that would help record the books that I have read or will be reading for various challenges.

However, from this month, I decided to become a little more organised and create a shelf for each month's TBR separately. This was done in an attempt to ward off temptation to add more books to be read in a particular month but alas I am failing in that completely.

I quite like the idea of different tags and would like to get into it soon. Let's see if I can shirk some of my laziness and create it :)

My current biggest shelf is my Read shelf with 547 books.

Kassandra wrote: "I use the bookshelf feature for challenges, but not much else. I find them really helpful for the challenges. My biggest shelf is my TBR at 553."

LOL, you are so right Kassandra, the TBR is my biggest shelf at 623!

I love shelves! Besides the three that are there my biggest shelf is for last year's reads with 64. I have shelves for challenges. I separate my library books and audiobooks that way. I have books that are on multiple shelves. It is fun for me.

I like being able to see at a glance which books were audiobooks, and not having to wade through all my books to find the few non-fiction ones I put on here. My biggest folder is speculative fiction. Too many folders would overwhelm me, and if I tried to separate all the sub-genres it would turn into a chore.

I have a book shelf for each year I've been apart of good reads in order to keep what I've read and when I've read it straight. I'm also trying to keep track of how many books I read are by female authors in an attempt to read more books written by women.

I love shelves for organization of books I want to read at some point. Since I play the seasonal reading challenge, it makes my title searching a lot simpler and faster.

My TBR has 1377 titles on it, so about four years worth of reading… with new titles being added every month / day. I'll never get all the books read that I want to read!

My biggest shelf is historical fiction with 429 and mystery-detective following in second place with 309.

I do "cross shelve" so there are definite overlaps between shelves.

Yes, I do use them. My biggest shelf is "Fantasy" with 186 books total.

I would like to do that but I haven't had a chance to actually come on here and make specific shelves. Though I've been on here for the past couple hours answering questions. Lol

My biggest shelf I'm sure is the to read shelf.

I have read, to read, owned and one for a 2014 challenge.

Eventually I want to organize everything.

I use it, especially since Amazon let me import my purchases (I did that little by little over several weeks!)

My biggest shelf is TBR-2015-Diversity-Challenge, which is currently at 91 books.

Yes I have a lot of virtual bookshelves on here, big help. Biggest is "own book form"

My biggest shelf is "Fiction" with 956 books. I don't divide fiction into genres. But I do have shelves for the country of origin of the authors. In that respect, my biggest one is "Italy" with 342 books.

My biggest shelf, after TBR, is 'favourite authors'.

I use the shelves and recently I created my own shelf of books I own.

No, I don't use Goodreads bookshelves. I used real bookshelves. Twenty-one are filled or partially filled with books that I have read and three are filled with books to-be-read.

I finally added a 'first- reads' shelf after winning free books and it being suggested. I'm not sure I get it, so am hesitant to change too much. I do have a small 'did not finish' shelf.

I have a couple, read, tbr, currently reading, but then I also have books I couldn't finish, and immediate tbr's (for books that I'm definitely going to read soon). Those are my either-or shelves, but other shelves I have are 2016 releases (which I clear and rename every year), books I own but haven't read yet, christmas/birthday wishlist, my favourites shelf, the books I hadn't finished reading but had to return to the library, and my lovers shelf.

My biggest shelf is my tbr shelf (at 540 books) but apart from that, it's my read shelf (at 273 books).

I have so many custom shelves it's almost embarrassing, lol. Don't look at my shelves if you're easily overwhelmed, but if you want help finding something specific, it's good for that (within the genres I like to read). I'm kind of obsessive about categorizing my books. To put it mildly.

I also have such an overwhelming to-read list that I've split it into categories to help me cope and prioritize. The most useful shelves are for books I own and next in series, and apparently which books are available at the library, since that's my biggest shelf. The next largest after that are Fantasy, and then Set in British Isles... yep, that sounds about right.

I have several myself, they tend to be broad though. I have debated making more, but I get distracted by reading haha

I keep saying that I'll make some more shelves and organise my books better. It's such a daunting task though I have no idea where to start.
My largest shelf is TBR with 207 books listed.

Shelves definitely help tame the craziness. I used a few shelves to sort my books by genre with Mystery being the largest by far. It got easier when I realized I could put a book on more than one shelf and didn't need to think about it too much (fiction & historical fiction, mystery & paranormal, etc). If you have a lot of books to be shelved, it's a good task to do when you're watching TV. Now I try to make sure I select a shelf (or two) when I add new books to my TBR.

I can't imagine NOT using them. Categories and sub-categories (shelves and yet more shelves) help keep track of the madness or as Margie said "craziness". I prefer the social demoralizing "hoarding" but that just might be me and my current state of unorganization.

CaptKirk42 Classic Whovian wrote: "I can't imagine NOT using them. Categories and sub-categories (shelves and yet more shelves) help keep track of the madness or as Margie said "craziness". I prefer the social demoralizing "hoarding..."

If you have everything organized on shelves you're collecting not hoarding :)

I agree with Margie cap! Collect away!

I love using the bookshelves feature to organize, especially since I read such disparate genres. And I do cross-shelve when appropriate, except for children's books. Beyond the three default shelves, my five largest shelves are: Bio/Memoir, Childrens, Fiction, Art/Craft/Design, and Nature.

Yes. Its the best way to track my TBR. I have a shelf just for that