Play Book Tag discussion
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Focus on Reading - Week 26 - Tags
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I have my own idiosyncratic tags, and pretty limited list. I have been known to create a shelf, add a few books and then at one point eliminating that shelf when I don't seem to be adding to it. Almost all the books I tag have multiple tags. I rarely have tags that match those for the monthly reads and I never create one to match. I hate having to page through a lot of shelves. I keep things simple. I use my currently reading and monthly reading tags to track books I might read for the monthly tag or some other challenges like Pop Sugar, or book club - whether PBT or other.
Most used: contemporary mystery, contemporary fiction, historical mystery and romance, contemporary romance, francophilia, Pop Sugar -- but I have a shelf for each year's challenge. Also armchair travel, art as subject or background, books libraries bookstores, biography memoir (surprising!), various Christmas shelves collectively, classics and classic redos, Children and YA (another surprise!), cozy mystery, detective, fantasy, first in a series, food and cooking, historical fiction,heist or adventure, Next in series, thrillers, suspense, and next by author.
That list pretty clearly shows where my main reading interests lie. ROFL.
I think there are some tags we don't use, (maybe we do) that might be super fun. Queens, twins, chocolate, sewing, clocks, time; I have been keeping a funny list of tags on the bottom of the secret TBR.
My tags are pretty standard, nothing too unusual. The one that makes me most uncomfortable, only because it wouldn't line up with anybody's, is that I have a catch all category called books-bookstores-libraries. Like anything and everything could fall into that category, and it felt wierd to separate those. So I just threw the 'kitchen sink' in there. Everything else sort of feels pretty standard. I don't think I have unusual tags of any kind. I have yet to not read for a monthly tag since 2016, and a few of them have quite challenged me. But I always find something.
Booknblues wrote: "How do you tag(shelf) your books?What are some of your most used tags?
Do you use a lot of tags?
Are there tags which are chosen on the tag of the month that you do not use?"
I use a LOT of tags! In "real life" I am a library cataloguer, so similar to library subject headings, I find it's a great way to organize my online "shelves" to be able to more easily find a book or books if I can't remember a title (I just commented on this earlier today to one of my coworkers, who I am training to help catalogue!).
Most used tags? Probably "genre" tags: Historical Fiction, Mystery, Biography, History, Young Adult, etc. That's going on memory. Oh, Canadian Authors or Canadian Fiction might be up there, too.
I used to use more personalized tags, as well (like I'd tag a book for whatever challenge(s) I read it for, or if I was a book club read, or an audio book, etc), but I mostly don't do that, anymore.
There are sporadically tags chosen here for the month that I don't use: "thought provoking" would be one of those! I feel like that's pretty subjective, and I don't think I use as many of those, either. Those feel like more personalized ones.
The reason I have a shelf for each year's Popsugar Reading Challenge is that challenge starting in 2016 is why I started actively use GR to track my challenge reading. Ultimately it all led to my finding PBT in 2018. That is when I started reviewing my reads and organizing more shelves.I avoid spreadshheets and separate record keeping. 😁
I started off keeping my tag system pretty simple. Just sorting books by genre. As I grew into PBT, I felt shamed (lol), as I visited other peoples shelves and saw the expansive lists people had. So, against my better judgement, I started adding tags, to be specific about a books nature. Then I started tags for my challenges. All of it became a mess, at least in my head, and last year I stopped doing it. This year when I find a book on my shelf that has one of these unwanted tags, I take it off and when those tag headings are at 0, I will delete them-I know I can do it in one fell swoop, just haven't.My most used tags are Fantasy, Historical Fiction and Non-Fiction History.
If the tag of the month is not on my shelf, I do not add it. For all my challenges, not just here, I almost always read from my TBR shelf. I just look at what the tag is and then try to find something to read
When I first joined Goodreads in 2018, I was surprised that people tagged their books by subject matter. I was also surprised at how individualistic (and idiosyncratic) the shelves were. When I started, I thought in terms of categories that the public library uses. My first shelves here were very basic: Fiction, Non-Fiction, etc.Three years in, my shelves have expanded and changed. I have a full page of shelves that reflect genre, geography, and subjects that the books are about. I always tag after reading a book. If I see that many books share a theme that is not already on my shelves, I'll start a new one. I recently added Romance. I often cannot remember a book's title and find that I remember books by these tags instead.
My most used tags are Books about Books, Debut, Fiction, Friendship, Historical Fiction, Memoir, Coming of Age, Family, and Humorous.
My idiosyncratic tags are "Playful" and "Gentle Reads". Many of my personal favorites are found on the Playful shelf.
Each year I start a Favorites shelf for that year and watch it fill in as the year goes by. Then I delete it at the end of the year. I also have written a "Year in Review" every year.
I am a big tagger. My books probably average about 10 tags/book and my tag list is 13 pages long. When I add a book to my shelf I tag it with the most common tags that show up on the book page and I also tag it with the setting and author gender and nationality if I know it. It comes in very handy for all my challenges. I can easily search for a book I have set in turkey or a mystery by a female author. When I finish reading a book I look through my list of tags and remove any that I don't think quite fit and add any that I think it fits that I have not already selected. I also tag them with the location in my house so I can find them easy when I want to read them or their library availability and format (hoopla, libby, dtb).
Like Theresa, I tag annual challenges like popsugar, read harder, and around the year. But I take it a step further and have a tag for each task. So I can easily see which books fit when I am trying to fulfill one.
Despite all of the tagging, I still have many PBT monthly tags that I don't use. I did have a science tag, but I do not have a thought provoking or made me cry tag.
My most used tags are fantasy and series.
I feel like Tags are just more work. Mine are only the basics - To Read, Read, Owned, etc. It never dawned on me till I joined this group that those tags might be useful for games or challenges. The main benefit of my tags is that I label if the book is on Audible, Kindle or Nook (if It's not in paper), which makes it easier to find.
Cora wrote: "I am a big tagger. My books probably average about 10 tags/book and my tag list is 13 pages long. When I add a book to my shelf I tag it with the most common tags that show up on the book page and ..."LOL! I had to check. I have 14 pages of tags. :-)
(ETA: That being said, I really try not to have more than one tag that mean the same thing (i.e. thriller, thrillers). I pick one and put everything under that one.)
I really do find they help me find a book if I can't remember the title. 99% of the time, I add the tags after I read the book. A few have personalized tags (ill? if my library doesn't have it, for instance) ahead of time, and a few have tags like "canadian authors" ahead of time, but not many.
Does anyone know of an easy way to put them in order by how many books are added to each tag? To see which tags I have the most books for? (I suppose I could pop over to LT and look at the beautiful tag cloud (similar to shelfari's). It wouldn't be exact, but it would give me an idea of my most used tags.)
I use tags but try to keep them to a manageable number - currently 2 pages. I do not want to create massive numbers of tags because it is a chore to navigate through them.I tag by major category/genre:
Contemporary Fiction
Fantasy
Historical Fiction
Literary Fiction
Science Fiction
Non-Fiction
By Continent:
Africa
Antarctica
Asia
Europe
North America
Oceania
South America
I keep track of my favorites, by year and overall.
My most used tags are:
Aventure (this surprises me)
Biography
Classics (which are separated by century of publication)
Coming of Age
Crime (another surprise)
Family Dynamics
Friendship
History
Journeys
Memoir
Mystery
Nature
Racial Issues
Relationships
Science
Social Commentary
Strong Women
I also track various sources/formats:
Arc
Audio
Library
Reviewed
Translated
I keep track of books on various lists that I read regularly:
Booker Listed
Boxall List
Women's Prize
I have several tags that make sense only to me and try to keep these at the bottom of my tags by putting a "z" in front of them.
I do not create a tag for each monthly PBT tag. Normally these fit somewhere in my standard set of tags.
I occasionally add a tag if it is something I find useful and have a decent number of books to add to it.
If I end up with a tag that contains only a few books, I try to find more, or, failing that, delete it.
I occasionally rename a tag. My "Dying" tag has been previously named "Death" and "Grief" and "Death-Dying-Grief."
I don't add a tag for each challenge because it would increase my tags to an unmanageable number, but I do find my standard set is useful for finding something to read for a particular challenge.
My 'z' tags are those that are essentially frozen and will not be added to -- all the Popsugar and other specific challenge ones once the challenge is over. I only look through those shelves when I am looking for a book I read for that challenge. My tags currently are barely in 2 pages and that irritates me already, lol so I am going through and combining or eliminating. I think it is time to just combine the 4 separate Christmas variations under one or two, for example. My goal is to have the 2nd page only my 'z' tags.
I was looking through some tags to see what was there just the other night and I was so irritated by having to go to click on the 2nd page when I finished a shelf in order to review the next one! I would never survive pages and pages of shelves.
Cora and Cindy, you've made me feel so much better. My tag list is 2 pages long. I never worry about the number of books that are on my virtual Want to Read list, but I do feel that my tag list is too cumbersome. Sometimes. I tag my books with the year that I read them. I could just sort my books read list by year but that leads to a great deal of scrolling if I'm looking for a book that I might have read 10 years ago. I tag any books Play Book Tag if I read it for a month tag or a challenge, but I don't tag for individual challenges. I have tags for geographical settings and for some time periods, but I try to keep it general unless I'm reading many books with the same settings. (New York City and London have their own tags, but most cities do not.)My most used tags are probably audio, and historical fiction.
I deleted a great many children's books when I was still using Shelfari. There were far too many titles collected in years of teaching. The children's lit that remains on my list have special meaning for me. Some of them are tagged 'Captain Kangaroo' since the Cap was the first person to read them to me.
LibraryCin wrote: "Cora wrote: "I am a big tagger. My books probably average about 10 tags/book and my tag list is 13 pages long. When I add a book to my shelf I tag it with the most common tags that show up on the b..."You've got me beat. I have 9 pages. I find them very handy especially when I can't remember titles.
Cindy when I look at your tag list, they are listed in order of the number of books in each tag. I couldn't find a way to do that for my own tags though.
I thought of this focus, because I have never used the tag thought provoking but obviously others have. I have found this to be the case several times in PBT for example - made me cry. When a tag wins for the month I usually add it to my list of tags, just for convenience to myself. One of the first I ever added was social-commentary which was the choice the first month I joined.I have quite a few tags and some with just a few books, 4 pages of tags. It doesn't seem unwieldy to me.
My tags are by literary type, date-(century, era, decade), geography- (area, continent, country,state), theme, PBT -tag of the month.
My most used ones are the literary as, nonficiton, mystery, memoir, historical fiction, etc.
I use a variety of tags; I do NOT try to match the PBT monthly tag. I tag ONLY those books I've read (other than the obvious to-be-read tag).I do tag every book I've read "concierge" and most of them "library" (since I get almost every book I read from the library).
I do try to tag each book I've read with the location; usually the country, but in the USA, I use the state. In total I have 4 pages of tags.
NOT counting the obvious "read" or "to be read" my top tags are:
Strong Women (948 books)
Audio (941)
Series (564)
Book Club (465)
Historical fiction (407)
Family (329)
Mystery (295)
Nature (278)
Women writers (276)
Movie (255)
Social commentary (252)
Literary fiction (205)
(Note: I had to go through all 4 pages to get these numbers ... my tag list is in alphabetical order ... would love to know how to sort by most-used.)
NancyJ wrote: "You've got me beat. I have 9 pages. I find them very handy especially when I can't remember titles...."Exactly! I like having a lot of tags.
NancyJ wrote: Cindy when I look at your tag list, they are listed in order of the number of books in each tag. I couldn't find a way to do that for my own tags though. ..."Huh... when I look at them, they are alphabetical. Maybe it depends what page I'm looking at...?
I forgot to mention that I also tag by place. And for history or historical fiction, often the century (or decade in the 1900s). In Canada, I'll use province and country. In the US, usually I'll use the state, but sometimes the broader area, like New England or American South or Pacific Northwest. Otherwise, I generally use the country.
Book Concierge wrote: "(Note: I had to go through all 4 pages to get these numbers ... my tag list is in alphabetical order ... would love to know how to sort by most-used.)..."Oh! I just figured it out (only because Nancy said she saw mine in order by how many books): look at your profile, not your list of bookshelves!
My top 10:
historical-fiction (353)
family (351)
mystery (305)
young-adult (299)
murder (283)
women (231)
friendship (222)
england (218)
canadian-fiction (216)
relationships (196)
I didn't totally understand what these tags were for when I first joined, or that it impacted the public profile tags of the book. I probably didn't figure that out until I joined PBT. Now that I know I try to tag with major genres, sometimes place, and by social tags if relative like LGBTQ and own voices. I am most consistent with major genre tags, but the others not so much. I would really like to get down to subgenre more like for horror use tags like "zombie," "vampires," or "haunted houses" etc.
What are some of your most used tags?
Do you use a lot of tags?
Are there tags which are chosen on the tag of the month that you do not use?