Even before I created this site in 2018, I had been keeping a spreadsheet with information on the books I had read in the hopes that I would not re-read something. Then came my initial personal book challenge and I was hooked with my tracker. Over the years I have kept including more information that I was collecting. Initially started with the name of the book, the author and my rating, I had included the book format, where I sourced the book, categories, pages and more. Over the last few months, I decided to take the spreadsheet to the next level and combine the years (previously each year had a different tab) and start using pivot tables to keep up with the data.
For anyone that has ever created or maintained a database, you know how this seemingly easy task takes on a life of its own. As I started to backfill information on the books from my early years (2011) and on, I started to do a data cleanse that I had never needed to do before. With each year closed, it never impacted my next year’s data too much as long as the summary data was picking up the right data on the new sheet. Suffice it to say, my idea of doing this in one night has become a much longer process.
If you are keeping track, I have added new countries to my Armchair Travel List, as well as filling in titles for many countries. Having started with 94 countries, I am now up to 116 – still can’t believe I missed countries like Sweden and Norway! I have been focusing on reading from this list as a personal journey toward Diversity and Understanding. I have now read 83 of these countries. With the constant addition of countries, I have been holding steady at approximately 70% completed, but I am learning so much from this I will keep adding on – even considering adding regions to the list!
While I still have work to do on the database, I am hoping to keep up with my books. There hasn’t been too much time left with all the cleansing, but with the long weekend coming up in North America, I am up for the challenge!!!
The Source 4 Books 