Japanese has a word for it: Tsundoku—the act of acquiring reading materials but letting them pile up in one's home without reading them. We all do it. You buy a book because the cover looked great, or a friend recommended it, and three years later it's still gathering dust on the bottom shelf.

The Art of Organization: Beyond Alphabetical

Sorting books by author is fine for a public library, but a personal collection is more dynamic. You need to know what you own, where it is (physical vs. digital), and when you plan to read it.

  • The Format Wars: With the Format field, you can instantly filter your library to see only "Electronic (e-book)" titles when you're packing for a flight, or "Hard copy" when you want a screen-free Sunday.
  • The Reading Lifecycle: The Status field is the heartbeat of this system. Moving a book from "To buy" to "Reading in progress" and finally to "Read" gives you a tangible sense of completion. The "Must read" tag acts as a high-priority queue for your attention.
  • The Genre Map: The Genre multichoice field allows for complex categorization. A book can be both "History" and "Political," or "Science fiction" and "Thriller."

Search & Retrieval: The Lender's Ledger

There is no greater tragedy than lending a beloved first edition to a friend and forgetting who has it. The Lent to and Lent on fields create an accountability trail. Next time you're looking for your copy of Dune, you won't have to tear the house apart; you'll check Memento and send a polite text to Dave asking for it back.

Curating the Archive: Acquisition Intel

For the serious collector, the Purchase Date and Purchase Place fields are vital. They transform your library into a history of your consumption. You can look back and see that you bought 15 books at that one independent bookstore in Seattle, or realize you spend 80% of your budget on Amazon.

Power Feature: Barcode Scanner

Entering ISBNs by hand is a chore. Memento’s Barcode field interacts with the scanner feature. You can stand in front of your bookshelf, scan the spine of every book, and populate your digital database in minutes. It turns a weekend project into a twenty-minute task.