Organize your reading list with Org mode

Note

Today it's time for yet another emacs package highlight. This time it's a package to manage your reading list with org-mode in plain text - org-books.

The package revolves around keeping an org file with your books (controlled by setting the variable org-books-file) and adding book entries to it, organizing it however you wish. I've setup mine with headings for each genre (sometimes by language) and then subheadings for series of books if they're part of one.

There are several ways to add books:

1. Manually, through the org-books-add-book command, specifying a name and an author. The package will then list out the headings and you can choose under which category to put it.
2. By ISBN, through the org-books-add-isbn command, it pulls down the title and author information automatically.
3. From a web url, through the org-books-add-url command, it supports a couple of well-known book reading / selling platforms (e.g. goodreads, amazon, etc.)

Org capture templates can be setup for a more personalized book entry setup (after all, it's just an org-mode file), as well as using org clocking / logging to track book reading progress.

This package is a great example how org-mode is powerful enough to support all kinds of workflows without having to put too much elisp magic on top of it.

Go try it out and manage your reading list with plain text and ease!

P.S. You can rate books, too, with org-books-rate-book and it even renders nice little stars in the PROPERTIES drawer!