How to check what's on the SFFBC group shelf

[Dawn F]

I need your help, guys. It turns out that I have duplicates on my shelves, and before I remove one of the editions, I'm trying to check which edition is on the group shelf and which isn't, so I don't accidentally remove the one registered on the group shelf. I've noticed before that I've read and rated a book which is definitely on the group shelf and yet GR hasn't registered it until I mark another edition of it as read. Which is why I now have this issue of dublicates.

But how do I interpret the results on the search function to the left of the group shelf page? When a book is on the group shelf, does it show up in grey or in black? The Left Hand of Darkness is definitely on the group shelf and yet it shows up in black, whereas Jade City and Rosewater show up in grey. I'm confused! D:

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

I'm not sure what you mean that it "registers" certain editions, but here's how I find things on the group shelf!

There's a search box to the left of the screen. This is the search function for mods to add books to the group shelf. When you search a book that is on the group shelf, it is greyed out in the search results. We select the first one that comes up (with a few really rare exceptions, like if the first version is the anthology version and we're reading the single book or something).

[Becky]

I think the confusion might be due to the fact that the search that you're referring to will show the most popular version of the book on Goodreads currently but that might not be the one that was the first result when the book was added to the group shelf.

The edition of the book should not matter much and changes that you make to your own a personal shelves should not affect the group bookshelves if that's what you're worried about. so if you remove the duplicate from your own shelves it will not remove anything from the group.

[Dawn F]

@Allison I thought too, that they'd be greyed out if they're on the bookshelf, but The Left Hand of Darkness isn't there for sure, in any of its editions (it gives me three pages, though the last one is empty, I checked them all). All editions of Left Hand are just black, even if it's on the spreadsheet. Maybe it's an error and I just stumbled upon the one that doesn't show up greyed out? :D

Not sure how to explain it, but with that specific book I started reading it, finished it, and yet when I searched for it later GR hadn't registered that I had read it so it didn't count towards the books I've read from the group shelf, so I had to again mark it as read (it happened to be another edition) and I guess I worry what will happen to my group read stats if I remove one of them. But as Becky says, if it doesn't matter about edition, I'll just remove one and shelf the other properly.

It's happened before, I've read a book, but when someone else has read it and I get a notification about it on my "wall", it doesn't show up as having been read for me at all, and I mark it as read once again, and I get dublicates. Maybe I'm just crap at using this site lol

[Becky]

The Left Hand of Darkness is definitely on the group shelf. Have you tried just looking at the shelf view, rather than using the search?

https://www.goodreads.com/group/books...

[Dawn F]

Yes, it’s there when I click my way through all the pages, but surely it should show up grey when I search for it to the left, like the other shelved books do? O_o

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

I do see what you mean though, Dawn. My guess is the version that we all read was re-released or went out of print so now it's not showing up.

It is another one of GR's quirks that it is very literal. Sorry it's frustrating! I've had issues with shelves duplicating books, erasing reviews, and so on. But as long as it's on the shelf you use to count your RATB challenge and the read dates are correct, it should count, regardless of edition.

[Dawn F]

Aaaah... yes, that would definitely be an explanation! Thanks! And yes, I ran into this because my RATB Fifth season challenge result says I had read 22 of my goal of 12, but my corresponding shelf only said 11, and I realized I had forgotten to shelf some books as the Fifth Season challenge. And also missed shelving some books on my group shelf so I have in fact read a lot more group books than I thought! I have quite a bit of cleaning to do to straighten it out, will continue when I’m home and have the spread sheet open :P

Agree, the site is extremely literal and detailed which is awesome but also requires a LOT of maintenance by the user XD

[Becky]

The edition that SFFBC has on the shelf is no longer the most popular edition... and apparently it's not even on the "other editions" page for a ways.

If you search by the specific ISBN of the edition on the shelf, it comes up greyed out: 9780441478125

But it is properly combined, so I'm not sure why it's not showing that AN edition of the book is already shelved. It is weird. GR Group shelves are... interesting.

Anyway, for a quicker method of searching, what I would do is set the page display to 200, which will bring the pages down to 2, open the 2nd page in a new tab (so you have 1-200 in tab 1, and 201-269 in tab 2), and use a CTRL+F search on the page rather than relying on GR search. :)

[Dawn F]

I see! Well I’m glad I wasn’t being completely blind there lol. Thanks, Becky, I’ll follow your advise.

[Anna]

Dawn wrote: "I ran into this because my RATB Fifth season challenge result says I had read 22 of my goal of 12, but my corresponding shelf only said 11"

I think you have it all fixed now, but I have to ask because I'm confused! Did you have duplicate read dates for those 11 books on your shelf, or how did 11 books show that you'd read 22?

In any case, I always have my Read shelf show both dates (start, end), and read count, because GR still sometimes adds extra read dates for no reason. I also keep track of everything elsewhere, and then check to make sure GR is correct. Kind of defeats the purpose of tracking things on GR if you have to track that it's working, but that's an entirely different conversation. Anyway, whenever I spot a mistake, I go check read dates/counts, and usually find something wrong there. And the find duplicates tool is also convenient for those who don't purposely shelve duplicates like I do. And sometimes the challenge counts lag behind, but when you click through to the list of books from the challenge page, it should always have the correct count.

[Dawn F]

No, I hadn't read them more than once.

I don't know how GR works so I may have misunderstood how that "Read all the books Fifth Season" challenge works, or how it knows what I've read that counts towards it. What I did was create a shelf called Fifth Season Challenge and put those I had read from the group shelf on that this year, as well as the monthly bookreads I joined. Except I forgot to do that the past two months, so when I just looked at my shelf called Fifth Season Challenge it said I had only read 11, cos I had only shelved 11 books. However, on the group main page where the post to the challenge and my goal of 12 is, it told me I had read 22. I'm guessing it was counting from my group shelf instead? I'm not sure. But I found some books I'd not shelved correctly cos when I started reading a book recently, I didn't know they were on the group shelf, and as I trawled through the books I'd read these past months and added them, the number went up. Right now it says I've read 26 that counts towards the Fifth Season Challenge, which is correct, while my Fifht Season bookshelf says 27, cos I've added Tigana which I'm currently reading and will finish this year, so the challenge count should go up to 27 once I mark it as finished.

I guess.

All these challenges and how to keep track honestly elude me a little, so I may be speaking nonsense lol

[Anna]

The challenge keeps track by counting the books on the shelf you named when you signed up. The read date has to be in 2018. So anything with a 'date read' in 2018 (no matter when the start date is) on that shelf is counted. That's why I find it mysterious that the challenge said 22 when there were only 11 books on the shelf! The only way that would happen is if each had two read dates. It doesn't matter if you actually read them twice, GR sometimes adds extra dates. It very rarely happens anymore, but I've had a few since the summer.

[Dawn F]

The dublicates that I looked at did have a read date this year and GR said, when looking at the book (regardless of edition) the book had been read twice even though I haven’t. They were just different editions, which I think was my mistake in thinking GR hadn’t registered that I’d read/finished a book the first time when I saw another edition pop up and therefore I had marked it as read again. The shelf clearly said 11 books, but if I include the dublicates, one was there three times so the total dublicates was 9, that’s 20 books in total and I may remember wrong that the challenge told me I’d read 20 of 12 (my goal). I guess the shelf itseld can only count it once but the challenge took it as two times if the read dates was this year. Would that make sense?

In any case I went over them, deleted dublicates (the tally at the challenge page went down when I did) and added the ones finished this year that I’d forgotten (the tally increased, yay!) so there should be no more discrepancies now.

[Anna]

Nothing on GR makes sense, but I understand what you're saying. I'm glad you figured it out!

I've read some of our 2018 group reads several times in 2018, and my challenge count is off, but at least I know why it is, and I'm choosing to leave it that way.

What's interesting is that I have two different types of 2018 rereads:

Ninefox Gambit - using the reread function, ie. the same edition has two 2018 read dates.

China Mountain Zhang - using the old way of marking rereads (which I still prefer), ie. two different editions, both with a 2018 read date.

Ninefox is counted twice in the challenge, Zhang only once. That's because I've only shelved one of the Zhang editions on the challenge shelf. But Zhang appears in the list sorted by the date I have on the edition I didn't shelve. It doesn't matter to me, but it's highly illogical.