This afternoon I updated the format of my reading list. For those who haven’t looked at it before, I’ve kept a public list of the books that I’ve completed reading since around 2016. Originally, I modeled it heavily on a similar concept from essayist Jamie Todd Rubin, and included notations for the format I the book was in (e-book, physical book, or audiobook), if it was a reread, and whether I recommended the book or not.
However, over the last year or so I’ve become increasingly annoyed at the layout I was using. It wasn’t that it worked poorly, but I didn’t necessarily enjoy determining whether or not I would “recommend” the book (since I would rarely recommend any book I’ve ready to everyone at large… I tend to recommend specific books to specific people). Additionally, I didn’t really like showing audiobook length by page count, and sometimes a book was technically a reread, but it was the first time it was making it on the official list.
And so, yesterday I started tweaking the list. I first looked at what Jamie was currently doing, and I noticed that he also had removed some of the extra formatting. (He’s actually using Obsidian Publish now to create his list, which I really like, but feels like overkill for what I’m doing currently). So, I borrowed a few ideas from his current list, added a little of my own spin, and as of this afternoon my updated reading list has been published!
I now show every book in roughly the same format, with a running count assigned based on books read since mid-2016 (when I started keeping track), a bold title, the authors name, and the length of the book in the format I read it in. That means that an audiobook now shows listened-to length, not page count.
I’m still not 100% happy with the layout, but it’s closer to what I want (I think). I’ll run with it for a while, and see how it works. At some point perhaps I’ll add back in some form of recommendation, if I can come up with a more nuanced way to show it.