Bookly | Delicious Library | Goodreads | Highlighted | Bookshelf | Literal | Book Tracker

Do you have a book-tracking app that you love? Share it with me in the comments below so that I can try it out!

Delicious Library

Let me transport you back in time to the year 2005. I’ve just graduated from college in May (the first time around) and I’m getting married in July. I sit down at my Macintosh computer and my inner-nerd starts to show, because I’ve just discovered 3-time Apple Design Award winning Delicious Monster, the force behind one of what would soon become my favorite applications: Delicious Library.

Return to Present Day…

Delicious Library was this great app that allowed the user to catalog books, movies, music, and computer/video games. The program was powerful. It made it possible to catalog thousands of items – obviously way more than the average user would ever actually need to catalog. You could rate the items in your catalog, and even receive recommendations based on your ratings.

But, I admit that one of my favorite features was the ability to see the current value of my collection. There were some great charts that showed the value of your collection by media type, total retail value (over time), and current value. There was also this bar chart that showed the number of items by creator/author. For a nerd like me, having access to these numbers was great fun!

You’ve probably noticed that I’m speaking in the past tense. I still own a license to Delicious Library, but unfortunately, it does not work very well on my M1 Mac Mini. Unless Delicious Monster decides to upgrade Delicious Library so that it will run natively on the M1, I am unlikely to return to regularly using the program. That doesn’t mean that I am unwilling to recommend the program to those who may have a slightly older Mac. In fact, it works quite well on my 2014, Intel-based Mac Mini. But since I no longer use that computer on a daily basis, it no longer makes sense for me to commit to using the app.

If you want to check the app out for yourself, you can find it at http://delicious-monster.com.

I’m embarrassed to say that I’m not certain what happened to my library file, because at one point I have over a thousand items being tracked in Delicious Library, but now I see only 212 items. What did I do?

Let me show you a few screenshots from the application. I think you’ll see why a numbers-loving nerd like me fell in love with this program.

Figure 1 shows a pretty typical Delicious Library bookshelf. You can see that even in my scaled-down library file, I have a wide mix of book genres: Children’s, Business, Science-Fiction, etc.

Figure 2 is an example of a shelf that is autogenerated by looking at the contents of my iTunes library.

Figure 3 is a manually-created bookshelf on which I have collected books about the various states of the United States of America.

Figure 4 is a smart shelf, populated automatically with any item that contains the words “Star Wars” in its title. As a matter of nerd pride, I feel it necessary to point out that I have way more Star Wars titles than just these few.

OK, this is where I really have fun! Only a pathetic 212 items in my library, and just look at all the data points available to drool over!

• Media Types: a pie chart that will show the ratio of your books to movies (etc.)
• Retail Prices: shows the distribution of the retail prices of the items in your library
  • In this example, you see that most of the items in my library cost around the $6-$7 mark
• Replacement Cost over Time
  • Sadly, my example is totally blank, but what you should expect to see here is a line graph, increasing in value as the size of your library grows
• Top Creators: shows the distribution of your items by author/creator
• Creators: a word cloud where the name of the author/creator increases in size as the number of related titles in your library grows
  • I think this word cloud may be one of my favorite features
• Features: another word cloud based on the features field
  • I feel that some sort of standardization of what is included in the Features field would be required for this chart to have any real value

Hopefully, this explains why I was so excited about using Delicious Library. I spent many an hour adding books, movies, games, and music to the app and then drooling over the charts it spit out. Maybe I’ll get to do it again someday.

What’s it Cost?

You can download a FREE trial from delicious-monster.com or you can purchase it directly from the Mac App Store for $38.99.

In the Next Post

Next up is Goodreads. If you don’t know what Goodreads is, you literally live under a rock. But that’s OK, because I love underground homes.

Bookly | Delicious Library | Goodreads | Highlighted | Bookshelf | Literal | Book Tracker

Do you have a book-tracking app that you love? Share it with me in the comments below so that I can try it out!

It’s March, and Spring is just around the corner.

In the Northern Hemisphere, it’s time to get the garden started, and the bicycle tires aired up. The gloom of winter will soon pass, and the sun will be our companion. What is one thing you will do this year to make this your best summer yet? Share your ideas in the comments.

The Nutcracker Trilogy

I will continue to shamelessly promote these books because I’m so excited about being a small part of Drosselmeyer’s journey. If you’re new here, let me encourage you to check out The Nutcracker Trilogy by Paul Thompson. All three books are available in print and as e-books. Books one and two are available as audiobooks, narrated by yours truly. Click the links below to explore.

Oh, and it doesn’t have to be Christmas for you to enjoy these stories (just like it doesn’t have to be Christmas to enjoy Harry Potter).

Apple Books / Apple Audiobooks / Amazon / Audible

Author’s Website