How do you keep track of short stories read?

[chongjasmine]

I track by memories alone.

 

[CasualDebris]

Great Question--I too am heavily into reading short stories. As a kid/teen I used a notebook, but it was difficult to find stories since it was not sorted by author or title. Eventually I began an Excel sheet, where I list Author/Title/Year/Where I read it, something like:

Bixby, Jerome It's a Good Life 1953 Twilight Zone: The Original Stories

This way I can sort on author, year, etc.

I also use ISFdb by rating the stories I read. This way when I look up a story I can see if I've read it, or I can click on my ratings page for a list of all rated/read stories.

 

[chlorine]

Great Question--I too am heavily into reading short stories. As a kid/teen I used a notebook, but it was difficult to find stories since it was not sorted by author or title. Eventually I began an Excel sheet, where I list Author/Title/Year/Where I read it, something like:

Bixby, Jerome It's a Good Life 1953 Twilight Zone: The Original Stories

This way I can sort on author, year, etc.

I also use ISFdb by rating the stories I read. This way when I look up a story I can see if I've read it, or I can click on my ratings page for a list of all rated/read stories.

Ooh I didn't know you could rate stories on isfdb! Thanks for the tip! I've started doing that (and also using a 'read' tag since I wanted to keep track of some stories I read a long time ago and don't remember well enough to rate them).
If I decide to switch systems later at least I'll have the list of the ones I read readily available.

 

[pogopossum]

Like Bick, I generally rely on memory - or lack of it - to track what I've read.
I used to place books that I had read in one set of shelves and to be reads in another. Of course this does not work well with short stories and collections of old magazines that often have duplication of contents. It worked even less well when I moved and gave away 9/10ths of my collection to a prison service and as giveaways to attendees at a 24 hour SF Film marathon.

Moral? I still have far more than I'll probably ever re-read. I rarely find myself unable to locate something that I decide that I would like to see again. But then I participate in two of the best resourced library interloan systems in the world. It's one of the few absolute perks of living in Ohio.

 

[BAYLOR]

I go by memory , and in case of short stories , I do re-read them.

 

[Danny McG]

Generally, yes. But most of my sf is used copies, library discards etc. and so it hardly matters if I use ink.

Not short stories but full books, I often browsed the SF shelves in my local library, I noticed some years ago a curious symbol (drawn in ink) was appearing in quite a few of the books.
It was quite small and faint, always on the first page of the books, it looked like a tiny cursive R.

I eventually realised that some user was doing it to keep track of what books he'd read.

I was typically checking out a half dozen books every week back then.
I got home and found this scribble on 2 of them.

Obviously I carefully copied this symbol into all the other books and kept doing this for months

 

[CultureCitizen]

As years go by I find myself enjoying short stories more and more. I read some collections, some magazines, and some standalone ones available on the web. Occasionally there are intersections between these sources, e.g. a collection will contain a story that I've already read as a standalone, or two collections contain a same story.
My problem is I will not always be sure whether I've already read a story or not, so I would like a convenient way to be able to keep track of which ones I've read. It would also help me to find back one I've loved but whose title I've forgotten. Does anybody has a convenient way of doing that? Book tracking sites such as librarything or goodreads are not good to track which story appears in which collection.
isfdb.com is an invaluable resource for tracking which collection contains which stories and vice versa, but does not allow me to keep track of which ones I read.

I'd be interested to know if some people have a way to deal with this (also I hope this is the correct place to post this question).

I don't really , there's kind of a log in Amazon since I buy most of my books there.
But I should really make a list in a spreadsheet and in Obsidian.

The advantage with obsidian would be that I could have links to the main list with summaries and characters.

 

[OuttaInc]

I would like a convenient way to be able to keep track of which ones I've read. It would also help me to find back one I've loved but whose title I've forgotten. Does anybody has a convenient way of doing that?

I use Zotero because it syncs between all my devices, but you could use any free citation management software. They're aimed at researchers who need to keep track of hundreds of scientific papers but there's no reason you couldn't use them to track short stories instead. Here's a comparison of the main ones. Most allow you to attach a pdf with annotations, which is also kinda handy.

 

[Guttersnipe]

I write down lists of the stories I want to read and put checkboxes next to them. I write, in parentheses, the issue and year of the magazine they're in.

 

[hitmouse]

I use Zotero because it syncs between all my devices, but you could use any free citation management software. They're aimed at researchers who need to keep track of hundreds of scientific papers but there's no reason you couldn't use them to track short stories instead. Here's a comparison of the main ones. Most allow you to attach a pdf with annotations, which is also kinda handy.

Zotero and Menderley are both excellent and free.

 

[OuttaInc]

Zotero and Menderley are both excellent and free.

Yeah I actually prefer Mendeley’s interface but they don’t have an app for my phone and since that’s what I have handy when I’m reading, Zotero is my current number one.

Both are excellent, though, and I’m surprised their use as a general reading tracker hasn’t spread much beyond research circles.

 

[BAYLOR]

Yes, that's right -- "Corridors" is in the title.

I have Before the Golden Age as one thick hardcover book. I think it was made into three paperbacks, so if you're looking for this particular story in paperback, you'd want to make sure of getting the right volume!

I to have have that book in hard cover , wonderful stuff. Among the items it contain is my favorite jack Williamson story Born of the Sun. which was adapted Slipstream Adventures comic 1976 issue number 3 . Actually, that 's how found this story , at the time I remembered the story but didn't note who had written or even the title.

 

[BAYLOR]

Sometimes I reread them.