In search of a better to-read list application

I read more books, or at least it feels like I read more books, when I can keep a tally of them somewhere. I also read more books when I have a way of tracking all the books I want to read — the ones that friends and colleagues have recommended, the ones I read intriguing reviews of, the ones that come through my selection queue at work and make me think "Hmm, I'd like to read that after it gets here." I started off with just a series of pen-and-paper lists (books to read, books read) in the small notebook I use almost entirely for lists of things; it's a decent solution, but until I attempt to index the notebook, it's a bit tricky to find the lists.

So I started looking for a digital equivalent to the paper lists. There for a while I was tracking my reading with a Facebook application called, simply, Books, which has the advantage of integrating to-read, currently-reading, and finished-reading lists. The main drawback is that you have to be a Facebook user to use it or see it. LibraryThing, which has been my home library cataloging application of choice for years now, has added to-read list features in recent months; I tried that, too, but in the end I think I'd rather keep LibraryThing as a catalog of books that I own. (A lot of the books I either want to read or am currently reading are books I borrow from the library. Surprise surprise.)

The latest thing I've tried is bkkeepr, a service that lets you track your reading via Twitter. You send it direct messages containing each book's ISBN and some simple metadata: "start" or "finish" to indicate when you've started or finished reading something; page numbers to signal how far you've read. You can even use it as a note-taking application if you message it with a page number and a text note, as long as it all fits Twitter's 140-character limit. I like its elegant, simple interface, the fact that I can update it from any number of devices, and its potential as a tool for keeping track of my thoughts while reading. If only it had a to-read list option, it would be ideal for my purposes.

So, readers: do any of you have a preferred application for managing the to-read list? Is there anything I'm missing?

Comments

[Emily Lloyd]

Goodreads.com isn't bad & has a mobile updating option.