Tool for Tracking Pages/Books Read/Reading

[Lock]

I wanted to briefly share the spreadsheet I use for tracking what books I’ve read or are reading + how much I enjoy them + how difficult I find them. It also has some bonus charts of questionable utility.

I thought there was a chance it might be useful to someone or other. Personally, I made it cause I couldn’t figure out how to use bookwalker + like progress bars + wanted to turn my enjoyment of books into a stat of some kind.

It can be found here.

Notes:

• Ignore the name of the google account. It’s random and doesn’t mean anything beyond “at one point I tried to read more news and had to come up with a news-related email address.” The spreadsheet that I keep updated is on another account.

• 不異世界 isn’t the proper name for “it isn’t an isekai” but I used it cause I was lazy. Just imagine 転生 is there. It’s not 現実世界 either though I think cause it’s including books not set in our world as long as they don’t have reincarnation.

• I had more notes to write but my mind is kinda dead rn

[Megumin]

Nice! How are you scoring the difficulty? I’m thinking already of my next read since I’m almost done catching up with Nagasarete Airantou myself and I don’t want to have much downtime and keep reading every day.

Are you aware that there are other two sites that do exactly that?
Learn natively lets you grade how difficult is too and see how others graded so you can get an idea of the next read.

In case you are interested in looking into it (one of them is in Japanese only):

https://learnnatively.com/

https://bookmeter.com/

My accounts are here if you want to see how it looks like:

• Megumin | Natively - Learn through native resources
• Megu - 読書メーター

[Lock]

It’s kinda just whatever I feel like! I mean difficulty is very subjective
If you mean the scale it’s from 0-100 with most scores being in like the 30s-60s

Interesting! What kinda manga is that? I can tell you’ve read an impressive number of volumes of it! Dude how did you stay focused for like 28 of anything?

Ahh thank you! I have accounts on both as well! Bookwalker is nice for finding books but I find it doesn’t usually have the page numbers for the books I read. Learn Natively I learned about only a couple hours before you told me about it and I think it might come in handy! Although I also like having a purely personal log of things cause I can adjust whatever I want

It is really interesting seeing what happens when difficulty is crowd sourced! I’ll definitely enter the books I’ve read significant portions of (although I worry I don’t have a good enough understanding of what makes a book correspond to a jlpt level)

[Megumin]

@Lock

Interesting! What kinda manga is that? I can tell you’ve read an impressive number of volumes of it! Dude how did you stay focused for like 28 of anything?

Slice-of-life, comedy and a bit ecchi, sorta manga. The first volumes were a bit hard probably because I’m not used to, I might revisit them later to see if I can go through them easier and get more stuff that I might have missed. Sometimes is hard to keep the focus on them, that’s why I limit to one per day.
Also I try to do it every day, because when I skip a day or two, I notice I become slower.

In both now Bookmeter and Learnatively you can add the page count if it’s not there, so is possible to keep the tracking of the pages you have read. Learnnatively does a better job, since you can put in progress, and feed the pages you have read. Bookmeter is only for statistics when you have finished the book, but is better in the personal tracking thing, because you can add a review after you have finished the book.

If you end using any of those services send me a follow! It’s interesting to see what other people are reading as it might inspire for your next read.

[zerohbeat]

@Lock

Bookwalker is nice for finding books

I can really relate to this… There are some months where I spend way too much time reading different free samples of manga / light novels on Bookwalker.jp…

MyAnimeList and Anilist can be good too to track stuff but just keep in mind that from time to time you would have to “fill in and ask to add” volumes which are not in the database yet.

What I started to do is write a physical reading journal ( plus I put what things I watch eg movies, j/k/c dramas and games I play). There are lot of ideas on YouTube how to do it…

It could be quite “useful” thing to do but not so easy to create stats hehe. I just do it for enjoyment from time to time. (I print the bookwalker page and stick some pictures, copy some sentences from the manga / light novels).

[Megumin]

@zerohbeat

What I started to do is write a physical reading journal ( plus I put what things I watch eg movies, j/k/c dramas and games I play). There are lot of ideas on YouTube how to do it…

It could be quite “useful” thing to do but not so easy to create stats hehe. I just do it for enjoyment from time to time. (I print the bookwalker page and stick some pictures, copy some sentences from the manga / light novels).

I do that too! I’ve recently done some changes to the way I keep track of stuff and will eventually update the topic of where I described how I do it.

Once I hit 365 days of doing it, I’m planning on extracting some stats out of it, and see if anything interesting or to change comes out of it.

[sweetbeems]

Founder of Natively here, couldn’t help but chime in!

@Lock

It is really interesting seeing what happens when difficulty is crowd sourced! I’ll definitely enter the books I’ve read significant portions of (although I worry I don’t have a good enough understanding of what makes a book correspond to a jlpt level)

Just so you know, Natively doesn’t ask you to pick a jlpt level for a book… it only asks you to compare the books you’ve read. So if you’ve read yotsubato and flying witch, you’ll be prompted to choose which one was harder (or that they’re the same). The difficulty levels are simply an aggregate metric generated from these comparisons and the JLPT approximation is simply just a guess based on the level generated.

@Megumin

Bookmeter is only for statistics when you have finished the book, but is better in the personal tracking thing, because you can add a review after you have finished the book.

FYI you can write book reviews! We’ve gotten lots of reviews (like on コンビニ人間).

Anywho, your own personal spreadsheet / bookmeters are certainly alternatives too, just wanted to pop in and clarify some things. I like the spreadsheet you got going there @Lock, especially your stats! I’m intending to improve the stats on Natively very soon (I only just added them), but there is nothing quite like the customizability of your own spreadsheet

[Megumin]

I’m also keeping my own thing, custom made, used to be a spreadsheet, now is a bit more convoluted with it’s own database and php and stuff, but it’s always nice to have a public library of what you have read, and is very useful for discovery of the next thing, especially the grading part.

Since you are here can I be selfish and do a feature request?

When I put on the drop down as Finished it would be nice if the Current Page field auto filled to the Book Page Count, like it happens when you click on “I’m finished” on the front page.

Is just more convenient for me to update it from there, as I don’t have to do it in two different pages for the finished book and mark the next book as in progress.

And also the ability to put the time there would be nice.

[sweetbeems]

@Megumin

I’m also keeping my own thing, custom made, used to be a spreadsheet, now is a bit more convoluted with it’s own database and php and stuff,

Wow! I love it

@Megumin

Since you are here can I be selfish and do a feature request?

@Megumin

When I put on the drop down as Finished it would be nice if the Current Page field auto filled to the Book Page Count, like it happens when you click on “I’m finished” on the front page.

Please that’s why i’m here! Send in the feature requests

You know, that probably sense. My only hesitation is that I’m a little wary of autoupdating things too much. For the ‘update’ popup, it’s an explicit “I’m finished” button where you can assume it’ll update the current page too, whereas in this popup it’s simply a status change so maybe a little unexpected. However, I’m struggling to think of a case where you wouldn’t want to update the current page too. I’ll think on it!

@Megumin

And also the ability to put the time there would be nice.

Oof, i probably won’t do this one unfortunately, as we don’t want to make this popup too complicated! I understand the desire though. What i may do is allow you to toggle to the ‘update’ popup from this popup? I don’t know, that also may be confusing… but it’s another approach.

I really do understand though that’d it be easier to just do all the actions you want from one popup. And from your library.

[Megumin]

@sweetbeems

You know, that probably sense. My only hesitation is that I’m a little wary of autoupdating things too much. For the ‘update’ popup, it’s an explicit “I’m finished” button where you can assume it’ll update the current page too, whereas in this popup it’s simply a status change so maybe a little unexpected. However, I’m struggling to think of a case where you wouldn’t want to update the current page too. I’ll think on it!

You can highlight the field so the user notices that it has been changed. And a revert button in case the user doesn’t want to update to that value. Just throwing some ideas there.

I’m not sure there’s a case where you would want to mark it as Finished and leave the page count less than the total pages… but who knows, there might be some obscure reason in someone’s workflow.

@sweetbeems

Oof, i probably won’t do this one unfortunately, as we don’t want to make this popup too complicated! I understand the desire though. What i may do is allow you to toggle to the ‘update’ popup from this popup? I don’t know, that also may be confusing… but it’s another approach.

That would also work!. Something like this:

You can probably think of ways of making it look better though. CSS and I are sworn enemies.

[sweetbeems]

@Megumin

You can probably think of ways of making it look better though. CSS and I are sworn enemies.

Unfortunately that wouldn’t work for mobile, but certainly could figure something out! It also might fix your ‘finished’ status change problem too in a more elegant way. The highlighting / reverting you describe could be built but is a little complicated.

But you know, I don’t want to take over this thread too much! It is @Lock’s thread after all and we really should be discussing his awesome spreadsheet (I may be stealing some of those graphs… especially difficulty vs enjoyment). If anyone wants to discuss a lot, please come over to this wanikani thread (open development thread)

[zerohbeat]

@Megumin

I’m also keeping my own thing, custom made, used to be a spreadsheet, now is a bit more convoluted with it’s own database and php and stuff, but it’s always nice to have a public library of what you have read, and is very useful for discovery of the next thing, especially the grading part.

I also really really considered doing something like this too due to Anilist and MyAnimeList not being that satisfactory (for my needs hehe).

Congrats for something like this. Really cool!

[Megumin]

@zerohbeat

I also really really considered doing something like this too due to Anilist and MyAnimeList not being that satisfactory (for my needs hehe).

The thing is I keep track of absolutely everything Japanese related.
So I can’t settle with one site exclusively on the stats offered by learnnatively, bunpro, bookmeter, etc…

I have also integrated the tool into various things such as a Streamdeck and a Discord bot, and technically since you are in control, the possibilities are endless. You could even integrate it with the API of the websites and get the data automatically and things like that… but that might be outside of my knowledge scope.

I have recently come across a tool that helps that is open source that I have added to my report workflow, I’ll write about it soon in more detail as I finish tinkering with it along with the other changes I have made since the initial post. This tool is more designed towards software development but it works as well for other things such as Language learning tasks.

[Lock]

Ahh I see!
Btw out of curiosity do you buy them online or physical?
Hmm has your reading speed also improved kinda, progressively? Sometimes I debate tracking my reading speed but it’s prolly only worth it if there’s a change of some kind

Do you know if there’s a guide to how to add the page count to bookmeter?
Edit: Found 【読書データ・グラフの管理】ページ数を修正する - 読書メーター

Ahh I see, I see
I will! Although I think I’ll make a new bookmeter profile cause my old one has only one book

[Lock]

Ahh interesting!

Do you have pics? I kinda wonder what that looks like

I’ve started something like that multiple times in the past but I always forget about it

[Megumin]

@Lock

Btw out of curiosity do you buy them online or physical?
Hmm has your reading speed also improved kinda, progressively? Sometimes I debate tracking my reading speed but it’s prolly only worth it if there’s a change of some kind

Both, physical and online. It depends on the title. The easier titles like Tsubasa Bunko I tend to buy physical. Also the series I like I often buy physical. The good side of digital is easier dictionary lookups, but I think it’s also part of the charm to look up the word/kanji manually.

I try not to invest too much in digital since it scares me that I might get locked out of the content I paid for. That’s why Bookwalker is a big no, as I can not keep access if something happened to my account for example.

@Lock

I will! Although I think I’ll make a new bookmeter profile cause my old one has only one book

If you end up doing, please share or send a follow!

[Lock]

Ooh I see!
That’s very convenient I guess since I already have a ranking system to go off of

Also whoa to be able to talk to the founder of a website o.o I’m kinda honored
Man internet forums are amazing

Do you have experience in CS (cause website)? I’m thinking of majoring in it but I’m not sure what it’s like. I think the other CS student I talked to said it was frustrating how much her code affected her mood but aside from that very interesting.

Ahh stats though
Man that sounds so epic
Like imagine having access to as many data points as there are users
I wonder what kind of interesting conclusions might arise

[Lock]

Ahh whoa
Is that in the thread you made? I should prolly bookmark that sounds fascinating

[Megumin]

@Lock

Is that in the thread you made?

This is the thread I made back in the day:

My 300+ day streak of doing Japanese daily

Objectives of this long post: Get feedback, share the methods, and maybe get new ideas. Background: What I’ve been doing since a bit earlier of new year, as the usual new year self-objectives, is a set of exercises/tasks to help me on my quest to learn enough Japanese where I can confidently read and enjoy Japanese media. Note that my main objective currently is reading, so it might not be the best for everyone. I do have N5, N4 and N3 certificates, although this last one I feel a bit like…

I intend to update it soon, when a year is over since I started.
As for reading speed, which I forgot to answer. Short answer yes, the speed is getting better.

The long answer is I’m not sure if it’s because of skill, or because I’m able to focus more on getting the context than getting stuck in X specific kanji/word. That’s why I intend a revisit.

Also now that comes to mind the revisit, @sweetbeems I don’t think there’s a current way to add multiple reads of the same book on learnatively right now, or I’m missing something?

[Lock]

@sweetbeems

But you know, I don’t want to take over this thread too much! It is @Lock’s thread after all and we really should be discussing his awesome spreadsheet (I may be stealing some of those graphs… especially difficulty vs enjoyment). If anyone wants to discuss a lot, please come over to this wanikani thread (open development thread)

Ahh it’s cool!

Also feel free to steal some graphs lol
Prolly don’t take how I’ve added random linear functions tho cause I don’t think those end up being very representative of the data