Organizing My Physical & Digital Library as a Mood Reader

Organizing your bookshelves or Kindle starting to feel chaotic? In this Season 3 finale, I’m taking you behind the scenes of how I organize my physical and digital romance library without making it a full-time job.

We’re talking sapphic shelves, BIPOC-only shelves, signed books, Kindle collections, Handy Library, StoryGraph, and how it all works together so I stop double-buying books and always know what to read next.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• How I organize my main bookshelf on camera (Elizabeth Stevens, Kennedy Ryan, Katie Robert + a dedicated sapphic romance section that reflects my values)
• The structure of my office bookshelves, including a BIPOC-only shelf and a separate shelf for everything else (contemporary, dark, queer romance, etc.)
• Why I use the Handy Library app to catalog my physical books, avoid duplicates, and even track my husband’s and kids’ books
• How I organize my Kindle collections for mood reading: Up Next, KU, physical TBR, podcast prep, Free Black, BIPOC, ARCs, anthologies, dark, contemporary, etc.
• How Handy Library, Kindle, and StoryGraph each play a different role in my reading life
• My system for reading three books at once (physical/audio + Kindle + Kindle app) without getting plots confused

Things Mentioned: 

Handy Library

Kindle Unlimited

Buy a Kindle

Tasty by Taahesi B. Williams (Amazon)

Running list of books mentioned (Doc)

Transcript

– Intro, disclaimer & Season 3 finale

Alesia Galati 0:00

Organizing your bookshelves or even your e-readers can feel a little overwhelming, especially if you've been reading as long as I have. Today we're going behind the scenes, and I'm going to be sharing how I organize my physical and digital books and what happens when I'm standing in the bookstore trying to figure out if I already own something. Listener discretion is advised. This podcast contains mature content intended for adult audiences only. Hey friends, it's Alicia. I'm very excited about this episode. Welcome to the end of season three. Oh my goodness. How did we get here? I am so excited about season four. There are so many incredible interviews that I've already done.

– Sneak peek at Season 4 guests

Alesia Galati 0:42

You can expect Regina Black, Gabriela Gomez. There are so many others. I'm not going to tell you yet, but so many others that are so exciting. And I'm even looking into the end of season four and some of the people that I want to interview towards November as their books are coming out. So lots of incredible things coming out for season four. But we got to wrap up season three. So let's go ahead and get into today's episode. Today I want to talk to you all about how I organize my bookshelves. It is not complex at all. I wanted to keep it very simple and easy for me to understand what I was looking at, how I was organizing things. And so let's go ahead and dive into my physical books first and foremost. So behind me, if you're watching the video, you will see I have my Elizabeth Stevens, I have my Kennedy Ryan, and I have my Katie Robert behind me. And then from there, you can't see it behind my back. I also have more Elizabeth Stevens and more Katie Robert because I'm part of their Patreons and I've been getting Katie's books for years now. Every time that they come out with a new book, I've got it. And then you'll also see I have a section that is not specifically one author, but is instead sapphic romances. And the reason I wanted that behind

– How I organize the office bookshelves

Alesia Galati 2:07

me and behind my screen like that was because I feel like a lot of the bookish content is gay romance, male-male romance. And I wanted to show that sapphic romance is just as important. And so I wanted to make sure that I have that represented, not just on my bookshelf, but also in a space where it shows where my values are and where I pay the most attention to. All right. So that is how that bookshelf is organized behind me. And then I also have two bookshelves that are in my office. You can see the back of one from over here, maybe a little bit on that one, is all of my BIPOC books. And I'll have a photo here for you to be able to see how I have those organized. So I have all my books authored by Black, Indigenous people of color. And I organize that by alphabetically last name. That just helps my brain. And how I'm able to see those and organize those, it makes it a lot easier. Now, my other bookshelf, I have all the other books. And so that includes gay romances that are not written by BIPOC authors. It includes contemporary romances, dark romances, mostly contemporary and dark romance. A few of the other sapphic romances that I could not fit all on this shelf here are also over there as long as they were written not by Black, Indigenous, or people of color. And so I have that bookshelf also organized alphabetically, author's last name. I also want to note that I have not read every book on my bookshelf. I know that some people they buy the books as trophies. Yes, mine are trophies, yes. But I have not read them all. I do have ones that are definitely trophies that I read the digital version and then had to buy the books. That would be like the entire Elizabeth Stevens collection. But if I'm at an event and I want to support one of the authors, or if I am shopping at Scribbles Bookshop, which is a signed bookshop, I absolutely love buying books from them. They do have a section that has BIPOC authors where you can buy books that are signed specifically by BIPOC authors or books that are LGBTQIA plus stories. And I really like having signed books. So that is, I would say probably 75% of the books that I owned are signed. Now, what was happening, see what had happened was. I would get to the bookstore or I would be shopping on Scribbles or I would be at an event and I would see an author that I had bought a book from previously, or maybe I had bought a lot of their series previously, and I was like, what books do I not have? I could not tell you for the life of me. And I know Story Graph has a way that you can show your owned books. I have used that. Now the problem is that it includes my paperbacks and my digitals. And every time I would try to scan a book, it wouldn't always work. It was feeling a little frustrating, honestly. And so the owned aspect of the StoryGraph app was not working for me, just as a user, as a person who wants to see things very easily. And so what I ended up downloading was the Handy Library app. And I'm going to have a screen here showing it to you as well. So you'll be able to see that if you're watching the video. You should also be able to see the video on Apple if you are an Apple podcast user on Handy Library. What I wanted was I wanted an app that I had only to pay a one-time fee. I do not like having to pay monthly fees for things. I want to just pay once and be done. I have enough recurring fees. I don't need more. I wanted something that I could have up to a thousand books because I also wanted to categorize my husband's books. Recently we were at the bookstore and he was picking out a book and he was like, Oh, this book looks really good. And I was like, Honey, you have that one. That was one that I definitely knew that he had. And he didn't remember. So I wanted to be able to organize his books as well. And I wanted to be able to organize my office's books and then my kids' living room books, because they have a ton of books also. And so what I did was I got Handy Library. It was free up to 100 books, but because I have 383 books in my office, I knew that wasn't gonna work for me. So I did up to the 100 just to test it out. It does have a very easy ISBN scanning. There were a few books that I did have to search for, but every single book that I wanted to add to it, it definitely had. I paid $15 one time, and that made it really easy. From what I'm seeing, it's like an $8 to $15, depending on what region you're in. But I absolutely love it so far. It has worked really well. I'm able to easily scan any books that I have, any books that I want to make sure that I'm adding here, and I can even go in and say, okay, I'm here with this author. What books of theirs do I already own? And that way I make sure that I don't buy duplicates unnecessarily, right? There might be a reason where I might want a duplicate. Maybe I have a specific version of a book and I want the illustrated version or something like that. But for the most part, it was really about just having all of my paperbacks in one place. Now, for Story Graph, yes, it still shows that stuff. I don't want to go through and remove all of my own books from there, but this is just a separate place where I can easily look at what books I have in my house. I also think that this is going to be good for if there were to be anything that were to happen to my home. I can easily see here are all the books that were in my house at the time of whatever thing happened. So that also is an added bonus for me.

– Handy Library app: why I use it & how it works

Alesia Galati 8:26

But moving on to digital. So for my digital, I use Kindle, and I know Boo, but I have a Kindle, I also use the Kindle app on my phone. And how I organize my Kindle books is a little different, and you'll see it on screen here. But I have where my prioritized ones are either a zero or a one dash at the first part of the categorization. So that way I can see exactly what I want to look for, and I have those top front and center. So the first is up next. Those are books that I own that are ones that kind of a TBR, very loose TBR. Books that I own that I want to read next in some capacity. The next is the Kindle Unlimited ones. So those are all the ones that I have borrowed right now from Kindle Unlimited. Next is physical TBR. So these are books that I own both the physical and digital copies of. And I would like to start getting more through my physical TBR and so being intentional about that. But I can read them on digital since I already have it on digital and then just mark it as red for the physical. I have another category that is podcast prep. So those are interviews that I either have planned or would like to do, and I want to get through some more of that author's backlog to be able to showcase them instead of just focusing on one book. Next is free black, and that is books that I got for free that are black authors, and I want to make sure that I'm prioritizing those as well. So often with these stuff your Kindle days or free book days, we download all of these books, but then we don't end up reading them or we read them and we don't review them. And so having them categorized this way helps me remember hey, you need to read some of these. Make sure we're leaving reviews and we're giving something back to this author for giving us this free book. Next

– How I organize my Kindle library (collections overview)

Alesia Galati 10:34

is anthologies. So I have my anthologies all organized in one spot. Next is ARCs. These are ARCs from NetGalley, having the digital copies there. They are ones that I do need to read, so they are higher up. And I did want to make sure that I could see those on that initial screen. Next is BIPOC, these are just books that I have that are BIPOC authored. I also can, when you're using your Kindle or the Kindle app, you can categorize books in more than one category. So I might have books that are in the free black category while also being in the BIPOC category. Next is comics, then it's contemporary, then dark. I have books that I DNF'd, which is its own category. I don't really want to remove them from my Kindle, but I have them there and I just showed that I DNF them. Dystopian, Erotica, Historical Romance, Holidays, Books for My Kids, LGBTQIA, Nonfiction, Books I Am NOT Reading or Don't Pad, Novellas, Plus Size, Paranormal or Fantasy, Books from Prolific or BookFunnel. Those are books that I've gotten by signing up to someone's email. Books I have read, Sci-Fi, Shifter, Sports, Thriller, and then I have uncollected ones, which is where I just kind of house them until I'm ready to put them into a certain category. And so that is how I organize my Kindle. It helps me so that as a mood reader, it's very easy for me to figure out what kind of book I want to read next. And then I have options to pick from instead of just scrolling through a never-ending list or scrolling through categories that don't really help me decide what I'm going to do with my books. Now I do use Story Graph alongside of this digital layout. I use it to figure out what books I might want to read next, but maybe I haven't borrowed or I don't own. I use it to help me track my reading habits, and I like it as a way to keep track of those stats. So to kind of give you like an overhead picture, my handy library is for my physical books, so I don't double buy those and I know exactly which ones I own. My Kindle organization is to help me decide what books I own or have borrowed from Kindle Unlimited that I'm going to read next. And then Story Graph is for organizing my TBR outside of either of those places. I wouldn't even say Handy Library is a place that I'm picking books from or choosing from. It's more about cataloging what I own than it is about having a space to pick books from. Whereas my Kindle organization is more about what kind of books do I want to read next, and my story graph is what kind of books do I want to read next that I maybe don't own yet on digital, or I don't have borrowed on Kindle Unlimited yet. Just to give you an idea on why I have the three different apps that I'm using for this kind of categorization. I am someone who reads three books at once. I'm usually reading a physical or an audiobook. So it's usually either of those. I have a little baggie or little tote baggie that I keep in my crossover bag that I bring with me to the kids' MMA or to trips or whatever.

– How Handy Library, Kindle & StoryGraph work together

Alesia Galati 14:10

And that helps with keeping that nice and secure and also keeping my books nice and safe. And then I usually am reading something on my Kindle and I try to reserve paranormal or sci-fi for my Kindle device. And then for my Kindle app, I'm usually reading contemporary urban romance or something like that on my Kindle app. And I personally find that helps my brain categorize them a little differently. And that way I'm also not reading two sci-fi books at the same time because then I will get them confused on what is happening with what. Like I just finished Tasty by Tahisi B. Williams, just came out with a brand new book last week called Tasty. And it is a black romance age gap. She is his business partner's daughter. There's BDSM elements to it. I would say the BDSM is a little more intense than I've read in a while, which wasn't bad. But maybe expect some face slapping consensually. So just a heads up if that's whoa, it surprised me, but it wasn't bad. That one was fantastic. But I just finished that and it takes place on a vineyard. And then I was gonna go and read The Cask by Danielle Allen, which is based on the Cask of Monteago, which is an Edgar Allan Poe short story or poem. And I was like, I don't know that I can do two books that are vineyard in a row. So let me change this up a little bit. So I try to think about my reading in that way, and that helps me stay better organized in my brain, but also all these different categories help me pick what I want to read next so that it is a little different than what I maybe was previously reading. So that is how I organize my physical and digital library. I hope this was helpful for you, kind of getting your brain going on how you might want to organize yours. I do want to know what your latest five-star read was. So send me a DM on Instagram. We readSmut. And then also be sure to subscribe on Substack. We are gonna be doing a live event in September, virtual, entirely panels. I'm gonna bring some friends in. We're gonna have a good time. And I really want to just make a space where we can have a great day. It'll be my birthday weekend talking all about romance, talking all about smut, and just sharing the incredible stories that are out there for you

– Call to action: 5-star recs, Substack live & Season 4 launch

Alesia Galati 16:55

guys. And it will be a free event. So go subscribe to Substack. Everything will be there. And we are gonna be off for an entire month. Go back and listen to past episodes. If you have not already, there's tons to pick from, so many incredible interviews that we've had in the last three seasons. You will see season four coming to you in the first week of July. So it'll be July 3rd. We will have the first episode of season four. So be sure to subscribe to the podcast on your favorite podcast app so you get notified when that episode drops. All right, until next time, happy reading.