The shelving system on this site really interferes with the way I like to track my reading as far as re-reading books goes. I have the same problem with GoodReads which the shelving system on this site seems to be based on. The problem lies with the fact that the three basic shelves are forced exclusive shelves.

On other sites such as Shelfari and LibraryThing I am free to set a book as both Read and Planning to Read or Currently Reading(or all three if I want). So if I'm re-reading a book I would choose to keep the book as Read but also mark it as either Planning to Read or Currently Reading, but I can't do that on here(or on GoodReads).

In the feature requests thread I asked if exclusive shelves could be optional because this would pretty much solve my problem but there have been no comments on my request either from staff or other members. I know that on GoodReads tons of people have asked for a better way to handle re-reads but the staff are extremely reluctant to do anything about it because apparently it would require a major database overhaul or something like that. BookLikes is still fairly new though so I hope that it would be less of a huge deal here, or even if it is, that the staff would be more open to it.

In the mean time I was wondering if anyone had any ideas on how to deal with re-reads within the current setup. So far the only ways I can think of to do this are to create custom exclusive shelves for "Planning to Re-read" and "Currently Re-reading" or to just select the regular "Planning to Read" and "Currently Reading" shelves. With the first option I'm pretty sure there wouldn't be any book status updates and with both options it would require me to take books out of the Read shelf which would mess up my total number of books read which I really don't want.

If I made the re-reading shelves as non-exclusive I wouldn't have to move the books out of the Read shelf, but again there wouldn't be any status updates with this option. The only other thing I can think of is to make a non-exclusive shelf called "Total Books Read" where I can permanently keep every book I ever read while I move books back and forth between Read, Planning, and Currently as I re-read them in order to get the status updates. While this last option would allow me to easily be able to see my total number of books read, while keeping my status updates, I don't really like the fact that it wouldn't be immediately apparent to anyone else viewing my blog. If I'm planning to re-read a large number of books, then my Read shelf will be significantly smaller and I'm sure most people won't bother to scroll down to my custom shelf to see how many books I've actually read even if I make a note of it in the blog description. I guess this last issue is really more about vanity than actually tracking my books though and I should just try to let it go.

So how does everyone else manage their re-reads on here(and on GoodReads if you belong to that site as well)?

Pick a different edition and rate it/review it. It works for me here and on GR.
You can create a non-exclusive shelf for re-reads and tag different editions accordingly.
It all goes to your final book count, too.

Sorry, I have heard that suggestion before about the different editions, but I really do not want to add multiple editions unless I actually own multiple editions. Besides not every book, including the one I'd like to re-read in the near future, has multiple editions.

I also don't want the same book to count more than once towards my total book count either. My total book count is meant to be the total number of books I have read, not the total number of times I've read books if that makes sense. If I read a hundred books and read each of them twice, I'd still want my total book count to be 100. The only exception I could ever see wanting to make to that is if I read two different editions that had some major difference between them such as abridged vs non-abridged.

Thanks anyway for the suggestion. I will likely go with my idea of the "total books read" non-exclusive shelf unless anyone shares any ideas that I like better.

For the time being you can pick different edition. But we'll bring changes and new features too. We do consider new options for books and shelf with new book data base.

Reply to post #4 (show post):
mammarella already suggested this and I explained why this this wouldn't work for me, which you would know if you had read the entire thread(which wasn't very long), but I'll go ahead and explain it again for you.

Using a different edition is a completely unacceptable option for me. I didn't do it on GR and I'm not going to do it anywhere else. If I pick a different edition to track a reread than that will result in duplicates and mess up my total books read count even more than the current system does.

The only time I would pick a different edition is if I was actually reading a different edition that had significantly different content like abridged vs non-abridged or an audio version. Not every book has multiple editions to pick from anyway.

Reply to post #5 (show post):
@Kythe42's Astral Library: Yes, we understand. Unfortunately, for the time being it's the only way but as we mentioned we'll be applying other solution for re-reads.

Well it's not the only way. I can think of a few other ways to do it depending on what one's priorities are. I've resorted to creating a non-exclusive shelf "all books read" where I permanently keep all read books while I move them back and forth between the three main "forced" exclusive shelves. The only downsides to this method are that one, it won't be immediately apparent to anyone viewing my blog the actual total number of books read(but at least I'll be able to see it easily), and two it doesn't allow for entering multiple read dates, but this isn't as important to me because I record all the dates elsewhere and I can always add them in once BL adds the ability to record multiple read dates(which is a separate but related issue).

Reply to post #7 (show post):
Thanks for clarification. We hope to release option that will allow for inserting separate dates as well as adding the title to read books and reading challenges (optional).

It's definitely coming.