New Book Tracker Database

This book tracker is head, shoulders, and several inches of pectoralis major better than the book tracker I tossed together earlier this year — so I think I’m going to export my data and import it into yours!

My initial motivation for assembling a tracker was one of mental hygiene. It’s often difficult to judge one’s own mental state from inside the mind one is trying to evaluate, but I’d discovered the number of books recently read, annualized, was a pretty effective personal barometer. For years I averaged, when happily relationshipped and satisfyingly employed, 150 – 200 books read or re-read. For a few years there, though, I was averaging 300 to 350 — which, in retrospect, was a period during which I was persistently depressed. (There was one week or so a while back I was reading at an annualized rate of 1,300 books; I don’t recall the details, but I evidently wasn’t very happy.)

These days, I check my projected annual numbers once or twice a week. If i notice them creeping upwards, I crank up my activity level, pay closer attention to my diet, sometimes disappear to the mountains for a day or two — whatever it takes to move the needle downward again. For most of this year, I’ve been reading at an annualized rate somewhere in the range of 185 to 205 — well within my sweet spot.

When I first rolled out this base, back in January, it was the barest of bones: Title, author, start date, stop date. As time has past — and especially since the canary still lives — I’ve slowly broadened the data I keep, gradually adding fields that speak more to reading as a pleasurable activity, and not simply a diagnostic tool. At the rate I’m going, somewhere around the end of the year my base should look very nearly like yours. I’ve decided to cut to the chase, though, and jump straight to the finished product.

Thanks again!

Thank you!

Your ‘pectoralis major’ comment cracked me up!! haha!

My life does not lend well right now to reading more than a select few each year but this database has given me the motivation to pick up a book in those spare moments I have. Number 1, reading is relaxing to me and gives me a mental break - Number 2, I can be nerdy and track what I read along with all kinds of stats.

I’m finally able to start reading more now than I was 2 years ago when I had a newborn daughter and was completely exhausted. Oh how life changes!

Hope you get to disappear to the mountains AND hit your 200 mark this year!

Oddly enough, in looking through the GoodReads API info, it appears those things can’t be done. I could see where maybe there’s a licensing issue in providing you with the ISBN, but it doesn’t appear you can get any book info (other than a list of editions) through the API. I could be wrong, but that’s how it appears at first glance.

Well thanks for looking. I am not skilled in that area but was hoping there would be some sort of way to pull in information.

I’ll stick to manual for now I guess!

Ah, but I’ve found a list of 53 book-related APIs out there, and I think possibly the Open Library Books API might be what is needed. Unfortunately, I’ve more experience using Zapier than any other bit of middleware — and that’s one integration tool you wouldn’t want to use for this task, because of its pricing structure.

I’ll try to kick this around some as time permits. Feel free to kick my cage if it’s been a while since I reported back.

Awesome! I’ve used Zapier for other things but not sure about this one.

Would love to see some sort of easy way to get everything in. I’ll keep tabs on this!

Thanks Vann!

Looks like a really useful database for me. I have a book list database that is basically just a spreadsheet of all my books. It has over 600 books in it. I hate to look a gift horse in the mouth, but do you have any hints as to how I might export these books and then import them into your database?

Thanks,
-barry

This is your best bet if you are on the “Free” plan:

Just do that one field (column) at a time - you can do the whole column at once, so it shouldn’t take too long.

Another option, if you are on the “Pro” plan, is to use the CSV Importer Block.

First, save a copy of your spreadsheet as a CSV. Then drop it on the CSV importer block - you will be able to tell it which table to put the data into, and then you will be able to match up the columns in your CSV with the fields in your base. If there are any conflicts, Airtable will catch them and let you know. It’s really a very easy process.

Hope that helps!

Hey @Barry_Margolius,

Agree with Jeremy on this one. That’s how I would do it by copying and pasting your columns.

I will say that if you are on the free plan, you will hit a limit at 1,200 records. Basically, if you use this database as it is right now with Author, Category, Genre, you will go past that limit if you have 600 books (600 books, possibly 600 Authors.)

Good luck. Hope the database works for you!

Thanks so much (both of you) for the quick reply. I’m quickly getting to where I need to be.

I’m on the Plus plan, but I would be willing to upgrade to Pro if that made this process significantly easier. The column approach seems only a tad tedious, but I’m concerned as to whether it would populate the auxiliary tables (like Authors, Genre, Metrics, and Status) properly. Any thoughts?

-barry

You’d have to do this for each “Table” separately. First, use the CSV importer on your “Authors” table and import the “Authors” and any info you might have on them from your CSV. Then do the process again for the “Grenre” table, etc.

If the column in your CSV has a one-to-one relationship with the field you want to transfer to in Airtable, then it should not be a problem at all.

You will see an interface where Airtable will show you the Headers of all your own CSV columns and then give you a dropdown menu where you can tell Airtable which field in your Table to match that Header up with - then it will populate that field with the data from the column under that header. If you leave the dropdown blank (don’t select anything), then Airtable will skip that column in your CSV and not import any of it’s data.

Thanks. I’ll try it tonight.

Anybody have any ideas on this:

1. I go to my old database and choose “Download CSV” and I save that file on my desktop PC.
2. I go to the new Bookshelf database, and drag that file onto the CSV Importer.
3. Airtable replies “Sorry, something is wrong. You must upload a .csv file.”

When I open the CSV file in Excel, it opens fine.

Any ideas?

Sorry I don’t have that option so I wouldn’t be any help. Maybe someone else will chime in.

I just wanted to say thank you for sharing your bookshelves :slightly_smiling_face: :books: !

Creating such a DB was on my list of “Data to regroup on Airtable” :winking_face:
As I’m new here and still discovering things, I didn’t know where to start with this one but with your bookshelves as a base (I still need to deeply explore it though :winking_face: ) it’s a lot clearer in my mind now :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes: !

As your base seems very complete, I might ending up to use it instead of creating a new one :winking_face: !

Awesome! There are so many bases I continue to think of to organize. Just this morning, I created a Gardening one to keep track of all my flowers I’m planting this year.

Hope it helps!

Ahah :slightly_smiling_face: !
It’s on my list too :slightly_smiling_face: :yum: :winking_face: !

Maybe one day I’ll use your “Gardening Base” too :winking_face:

Thank you again :slightly_smiling_face: (Helping, this one will :winking_face: )

So, 2018 YTD, thanks to a slightly tweaked version of your base, with assistance from Airtable Blocks.

Yay! Love the visuals. Looks so much more fun that way. Looks like you will definitely hit 200 by the end of the year! I’m still tracking mine also. A far cry from your number, but thanks to my tablet, ebooks, and this tracker, I’ll be at 25 after this weekend. This is more than I’ve been able to do in a long time!
Glad it’s working for you!

I’m not sure how but Simon Hørup Eskildsen seemed to have automated his process for books.

I can’t post links but if you google Simon and Airtable, you will come across his website Sirupsen in the top searches.

Hi there! Have you messed around any more with pulling book data from Open Library Books or any other APIs into Airtable?

Unfortunately, I’ve been overtaken by events: I’m in the middle of what is effectively my third home and office move since August, having had two residences sold out from under me in a 4-month period.

Actually, this one is more of a non-move: I’m dumping everything into storage until I figure out my next step. I expect to be an annoying roving houseguest for a while, catching up with distant friends and family I haven’t seen in ages. (My mother’s 96th (!) birthday is coming up, so I’ve promised to spend some time back East.)

The reason I’m bringing this up is that while I’m uncertain what my involvement with Airtable will be long-term, one of my near- and mid-term goals is to work my way through the backlog of unfinished bases and routines I’ve acquired in the past 20 months. (Not to mention trying to rehabilitate my consultancy from damages wrought by having spent most of 4Q 2018 [and 2019 to date] in the back of a U-Haul box truck.) The ‘books read’ base is high on that list.

However, I should mention I’ve lately been leaning more towards integration with Google Books, at least at first. It’s not their best-documented API, but what I’ve found recently leads me to believe it makes available a much larger dataset than I’d thought at first. More importantly, though, somewhere north of 90% of what I read in 2018 was sourced through Google Books, either as Play purchases or uploads, so it only makes sense to start there. I’d like to provide equivalent non-Google functionality, as well, subject to limitations of the source APIs. (Heaven knows I’ll have the time: There is a limit to the number of hours of NCIS a non-nonagenarian can safely watch in a day. :winking_face: )¹

1. Just kidding: The woman is more active — and far more productive — than I am. She admits, though, to having started to slow down a bit lately. Since she turned 93, she no longer accepts any civic organization appointments or board memberships for terms of longer than a year, and she’s been trying to commit to 4 or fewer meetings a week. Last I spoke with her, she had pared it back to 5, on average — but as her terms on two committees end this month, prospects are good.

Hi @W_Vann_Hall

I was wondering if something was going on with you and after reading the above post, it seems there is or maybe I was being a pain, always bothering you. :slightly_smiling_face:

I often find your posts/replies interesting, so no matter where you post from, you have one member that will be interested.

Mary

PS Your mother sounds like a very interesting lady and quite active for her age, too.

Hi, there! I wanted to follow up on this. I’ll create a new post also but wanted to let you know. I finally posted my Plant Landscaping Base in case you are still interested!

Have a lovely day!