Reading in Public No. 87: The promise and perils of tracking our reading lives

And what would happen if we just let it all go?

Oct 22, 2025

This summer, I got the following question from a reader:

I have been consumed with the idea of not tracking my reading. I found it was getting too much, too negative, and wasn’t really serving the purpose I wanted it to. I haven’t tracked for a month, and while that’s been freeing, I’m not being as thoughtful about the texts as I want. I’d be curious on your thoughts about this: different ways to track our reading, or the implications/consequences that happen when we DO track our reading.

My Patreon Book Club discussed this at length. Most of the community there tracks their reading in some way—everything from updating Goodreads to handwritten lists to rigorous spreadsheets. But many people agreed that there was something about tracking reading that altered the reading experience at its core. For most—though not all—tracking our books is a relatively new activity. We can still look back on a time when we read without tracking what we read…and it feels different!

Today, I’m taking you through my own history with tracking (and not tracking) what I read, and weighing in on this reader’s questions: what do we gain and what we lose by tracking what we read? But I need your help! I’m relying extensively on personal experience for this response, but everyone’s reading varies immensely, so I want to cast a wide net. Do you track what you read? How? If you don’t track your books, what is that experience like? Do you forget them or have a hard time choosing what to read next? Share your thoughts in the comments and help out a fellow reader!

Tracking methods.

I’d say there are three main reading tracking methods that I hear about most often and I’ve tried them all, but of course there are others.

Deedi Brown

shared her AirTable method with me (on this exact date!) last year. If you have another, please tell me!

The simple list. It could be digital or analog, but the easiest and simplest way to record what you read is with a list of books. Currently, I just do title and author in my Notes App. You could add star ratings, highlight favorites, or include the date read, or you can just keep it to the books.
Goodreads, Storygraph, or other apps. There are a variety of apps that serve the function of tracking reading and they are probably the most popular method. Each sites vary, but I think all of them let you include the date you read each book, a star rating, and a mini review. Some offer more functionality so you can keep track of different reading data points.
Spreadsheets. I know lots of readers who keep detailed spreadsheets of what they read. This has the benefit of allowing you to track any detail you can imagine. You can add columns for publishing house, country of origin, recommendation source, editor, on and on. If you are not a spreadsheet wizard, there are readers who are who sell their tracking devices.
Traci Thomas
and
Sarah Dickinson
both make popular and useful versions.

A personal history of tracking my reading.

I started tracking my books to varying degrees in 2010. Someone in my graduate education program was an early-ish Goodreads adopter and convinced many of us to try it. I remember thinking it was a fantastic idea, but I was frustrated by trying to remember all of the books I’d read previously. You’d think this would be a good impetus for tracking because I was experiencing first hand what happens when I couldn’t recall everything I’d read, but it actually had the opposite effect on me. Because I knew I was always going to be missing some books and my shelf was never going to be complete, I didn’t get very bogged down with recording everything I read even after I started using Goodreads. At that point in my life, I wasn’t worried about forgetting a book I had read—not just because of my youthful memory, but because that wasn’t what reading was about for me. I kept up with Goodreads off and on through two grad school programs, but I don’t remember logging my books affecting my reading very much.

Then in the spring of 2014, I started my FictionMatters instagram account as part of a graduate school project (different program, this time for English Lit) and once I started teaching that fall, I did use it as a way to keep track of what I read. I was a first year high school teacher so I wasn’t read a ton in my leisure time, but it was nice to have a visual record of the books I did read, particularly when I wanted to recommend a book to a student or consider a new book for our curriculum. I must have also been updating Goodreads because—from what I can recall—the books are all there, but I didn’t think about it much and probably failed to record some of what I read.

Around 2018, when my public reading life became bigger, I started listening to book podcasts and this is when I first heard the term “tracking your reading” and realized just how serious some readers are about it. Many book podcasters I listen to are big time reading trackers. They have systems and spreadsheets that keep track of all kinds of data like what they rated the book, the publisher, author facts, where the recommendation came from…so much! And many of these podcasters are major evangelizers for these tracking systems because, for them, tracking has significantly improved their reading lives. It totally makes sense! If you can look back not just on what you’ve read, but how you felt about each book, you have preserved a more complete memory of that book. A lot of people also say that by assessing what those books have in common, they can find more books they love and waste less time on books they aren’t going to like.

With all the love in the world to my friends who keep up with these systems, I have tried this, and I hate it. It is one of those great for you, but not for me things. Whatever helps people keep reading and keep loving books is awesome. But for me—no matter how many preloaded trackers I’ve tried—this is a bust. This fails for me in part because I don’t like the feeling of “hacking” my reading; using data to help me select my books feels like algorithmizing myself. I’ve written on this before and (surprise, surprise) have more to say later in this post.

FictionMatters

Reading in Public No. 73: Trying to hack our reading is leading to stagnation

Last month I picked up a 200ish page mystery from the 1950s called The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey. I can’t quite recall how this book ended up on my radar. I know it’s on some best mystery lists, but I don’t really look at those lists because if there’s one thing I know about myself as a reader, it’s that I don’t enjoy mysteries. Nevertheless, th…

6 months ago · 120 likes · 46 comments · Sara Hildreth

And—to be honest—I’m also lazy. I’m not going to take the time to input all of that information into a sheet. I’m just not. After years of trying and failing to maintain some sort of system (and feeling like a failure because of that), I’ve given up on this kind of extensive tracking. Now, I keep a running list of books I’ve read in my Notes App. I do consider it tracking because I look back on these lists regularly and because I use it to record how many books I read each year. But I don’t include any information other than title and author. Of course, I have my reviews here on Substack to look back on, which is kind of the same thing as keeping notes about books in a tracking device. As for Goodreads…here’s my shameful secret: I outsource it. Adding books to Goodreads is one of the things my awesome assistant

Kristine Rego

does because I struggle to make time for it and I really dislike the interface.

So. Having been all over the map with if and how I track my reading, here’s what I can offer in response to the question that kicked us off.

The good.

You remember what you’ve read. This is the most obvious, and it’s not unimportant. There are books that I cannot say with certainty if I have read or not because there was a time when I didn’t record the books I finished. That is definitely annoying.
You can more easily recommend books to others. This is probably the main reason I track my books now. Part of my job is to recommend books, and I can’t do that nearly as easily if I don’t keep track of my books. I obviously need to remember what I read to create lists and respond to recommendation requests, and having everything in one or two places is very helpful.
It might help you choose better books. People say this all the time, and I believe that it’s true for them, but it’s never been the case for me. I’m never going to avoid a book that I’m interested in because it’s from X publisher or has long chapters or doesn’t use quotation marks or is recommended by X person. Nor will I read a book I don’t think I’m interested in for those types of reasons. If I’m interested, I’m interested.
It provides an opportunity for reflection and intentionality. In spite of the point above, I do think that keeping a reading record has allowed me more opportunities to reflect and to be intentional. Even without tracking specifics about each book, I can glance at my list and get a sense of reading life qualities that are important to me: backlist reading, keeping up with new reviews, diversity of voices, works in translation, etc. I don’t crunch the numbers, but I do reflect back which can allow me to course correct intentionally if I want.
It serves as a personal historical record. Remember the list of books from the Columbus Library patron? I’m not thinking about what I’m leaving behind when I track my books, but I kind of want to leave something like that behind.

The bad.

It can be time consuming. Some people have fun fiddling with their data, but that is not me! I’d rather use that time reading or writing about what I’m reading.
It can put the focus on quantity not quality. I never thought about how many books I read in a year until I started tracking. This is so obvious, but I’m so steeped in the culture of reading tracking that it’s kind of impossible to imagine a time when I didn’t even think about that number. I don’t set quantity goals and I like to believe I focus more on quality. But the fact remains that I am tracking the number of books I read and just contemplating that information changes the experience for me.
It can lead to overanalyzing and “hacking.” This, I believe, is what the questioner was largely getting at with their concerns. Tracking and looking back at what we’ve read can lead us to overthink what to read next. We can get stuck thinking something like “well I’ve read three family sagas so I should probably read something different” or, conversely, “long books really haven’t been working for me this year so I’m going to avoid such-and-such.” We can start worrying that our next great read is not the book we’re currently reading and get hung up on finding what’s best for us instead of just reading a pretty good book. Personally, I think looking at our data and trying to crack the code of our taste is a fool’s errand. Not everyone uses their reading tracking this way, and some people like this feeling, but for me, it cuts me off from my interests and intuition, which are the systems I would prefer to instruct my reading life.
It can make reading feel like a chore. Adding any sort of work element to a hobby can make it feel like a job. However you track, this can happen.
It can lead to comparison. With more data points, there’s more room to compare. Who read more? Who’s reading the most books in translation, on prize lists, from indie publishers, etc. If you don’t know that data, you can’t compare it.

Notice that all of the negatives are things that might happen. Certainly, these things aren’t true for everyone, but they’ve all been true for me at some point.

The complicated.

Let’s get into the more interesting stuff because there are a few amorphous ways I think tracking can impact our reading.

I worry that tracking shifts my focus from reading a book to having read a book. It’s not that I never thought about my reading list as the books I had conquered before I started tracking—I have an MA in English so I am well versed in the “have you read this” game. But I think tracking can make us think more about the books we want to have read than the books we want to be reading. Additionally, tracking makes a lot of us antsy. We get antsy if we’re not adding a book to our read list every week rather than staying present with what we are reading. I think if I stopped tracking my books—which I really can’t do because of my job—I would be able to ease back into a mode where I was spending more time reading what I was reading rather than thinking about finishing books and what to read next. And honestly, that might outweigh a lot for many readers.
Tracking books makes us overanalyze what “counts.” I see lots of online discourse about what types of reading experiences add to your yearly reading total. Should we count books we don’t finish? Chapter books we read to our kids? Books we skim part of? Essay collections we jump around in? Here’s the thing: we don’t worry about what books count if we’re not counting our books. It seems silly to fret about whether we “really read” a book or not in this way just because we’re paying attention to our tallies.
I don’t think tracking books necessarily makes me a more intentional reader. As mentioned, I do think keeping a record of our reading can help us with reflection and intentionality, but I really think it’s more accurate to say it alters how we read intentionally. With tracking, I can pay attention to categories that are important to me (and if you keep stats you can really pay attention to this). For example, it is important to me to not exclusively read white authors or American authors or English speaking authors. Knowing what I’ve read helps me stay conscientious about this. But, for me, intentional reading also means reading what is interesting to me. It’s not about checking boxes (though I love a project!) or even finding books I will love. It is about paying attention to what is calling to my own individual subjectivity at any given moment. And, for me, tracking can inhibit this. If I find myself paying too much attention to categories, I can start to lose touch with my taste and curiosity. This is a balancing act, but I think my own curiosity does lead me to reading diversely when I’m in tune with it.
Not to get existential, but I don’t want to harvest my own data when every entity out there is already doing that. As mentioned, the most honest reason I don’t keep a detailed reading tracker is laziness. But I also chafe against the idea of mining my personal data to improve my reading life. The entire technological world is trying to reduce our humanity to a data set—we don’t have to do the same thing to ourselves. I know many many readers who love data and find this type of tracking and analyzing extremely valuable, and that’s great! But I want to push back against the idea that tracking is the only or best way to know yourself as a reader. Your self is more than your data, and you can know your taste and who you are as a reader without keeping meticulous lists and statistics. Your unique subjectivity can’t be reduced to the numbers.

So after all these musings, I think tracking can be great for reading, but it’s not the magic solution it’s framed as and, for some readers, it can actually make the reading experience less pleasant. To the reader who posed this question, I hope this reflection frees you from any practice that doesn’t feel beneficial and joyful to you. As for myself, in writing this, I think I discovered something new I want to try when it comes to (not) tracking my books. It’s super simple and I can’t believe I hadn’t thought of this previously, but I’m going to keep an unnumbered list. Currently, my notes app list of read books is numbered, but I don’t really need that information—I certainly don’t need it at all times. I’m going to move to an unnumbered list either in my phone or in a notebook and see if it changes my attitude towards books.

As always, I really want to hear from you! Do you track your books? Have you gone through different periods of various tracking systems? What do you like about tracking your books? What do you struggle with? I’d especially love to hear from you if you don’t track…what is that like??