Book Tracking 2026

For 2025 I got lazy tracking books I was reading. I tried relying on the kindle-goodreads connection but I hate it so much. I had a script that could convert a goodreads export into the format I needed for this site but it was a pain in the arse and I didn't do it often. And adding books manually to goodreads is just horrible, so I missed loads because I couldn't be bothered. Amazon really ruined that service.

I wanted a low-friction way to track books without going back to the old google forms and spreadsheets method, and I didn't want to sign up to yet another app that required a subscription or my first born child to work, so I went homebrew hooked up github issues and actions to do it for me.

Each book gets its own issue, and the issue number becomes the book's ID in my books json file. When I open an issue using the "Track a book" form, the workflow reads the title, author, format, status, and notes. That creates (or updates) the book entry for the current year, and sets the "date added" from the issue's creation time.

The status dropdown is just intent - started keeps the issue open. finished is for when I already completed a book and want it logged immediately; the workflow will close the issue for me so it gets a finish date right away. Any notes go straight into the book's review field, so anything I add there shows up in the final list.

When I'm done with a book, I close the issue. Closing is the finish signal: it sets the date read from the issue's closed time, grabs any non-bot comments, and appends them to the review in order. That lets me leave thoughts in comments and have them collected automatically, without copy-pasting.

Once it's closed, it's considered complete. Edits after that are ignored, which keeps the record tidy and avoids accidental rewrites. It's simple, works with the tools I'm already using, I can do it from my phone and I don't have to figure out Cloudflare auth or workers or anything.

We'll see how it goes.