Reading - overview
Contents
See also wider, ongoing article/project "Media Distillery" for notes on my various goals, theories, and practices with media curating and tracking.
1) My Reading Queue on LibraryThing
this displays the books, and sometimes papers/articles/essays, in the Reading list" collection in my LibraryThing personal library catalog. Sorted by the priority level, i.e. queue position, that I've assigned them. It's roughly what I have on hand in the nearest bookpiles/shelves around me and digital equivalents. [see also, full catalog, listing the ~5000 books I've currently or formerly owned, or read, and the 2,000 I presently own].
2) Digital media spreadsheet
To see the full list, click here (or, on desktop/laptop, view and scroll in the box below).
This is basically a listing of my "_Readings" folder on Google Drive. How I use it:
I regularly save digital files of reading material, for various purposes, in this folder.
when I save files there, I name them in a standardized way so that the filename generally contains author, year, title, identifier, etc.
whenever a new items is saved there, a script is triggered (via IFTTT.com) that writes the filename to a new line at the end of this spreadsheet.
periodically I look through the file and push new and/or newly prioritized items to the top, by using ths move-row-to-top script.
[a note on reading devices for digital texts like the above]
I feel like I've long crucially lacked a suitable way to read materials like this, that works well for me. What I want is:
a portable device with a larger screen, something like 6x8 or 8x10"
probably reflective e-ink rather than LED-type projective display
with some way to note/highlight text and keep this associated with the document, and
set up so I can easily pick up and turn on and have access to a automatically sync-ed list of materials like the one below.
The reMarkable Paper Tablet is perhaps the closest thing I've seen to this.
3) Web materials, more ephemerally
I also extensively gather and save-for-later Web items more ephemerally, by saving links to the Pocket app. I've done this consistently with almost all items noted or read since 2014, and have periodically done analyses, e.g. to see patterns, prioritize most-valued items and/or move those into other queue such as digital readings folder above.
4) Podcasts
I follow 100+ podcasts, which I regularly re-prioritize and from which select episodes of interest to put into a listening queue.
I think that the podcast realm has actually developed some of the best general 'reading' tools/practices in use today. Taking the example of the podcast app I use, PocketCast, it implements an easy but quite customizable and sophisticated reading flow, where you can subscribe and sort and organize many podcast subscriptions, listen to all or filtered set or just selected episodes, and anytime reorder your listening queue, including with a "move to top" feature.
[update: I did some hacking to implement a similar "move to top" capability in my digital files spreadsheet -- great for prioritizing one's library].