Hey Jonathan,
responded in line but the gist is - this is a hobby and I'm not going to
spend hours and hours thinking about corner cases/etc... if a book has
multiple authors, I'll pick one, if it belongs to multiple series, I'll
pick one, if it's a spin off to a main series, I'll just track the spin
off and ignore that it's part of a larger set. This will suit my needs fine.
On 8/10/2014 9:50 AM, Oogie McGuire wrote
If I were doing your system I'd do the following:
Book table
Title
number of pages
Foreign key links to an authors table and a series table
boolean read or not or else a link to a table read status see below
Authors
Name
Series
Name of series like Dragons of Pern or Harry Potter
Read status
started
finished
wanted
Linking should be by query.
When you design that table for Series, remember:
The same work can be in two or more series. For example: James Legge's 2
volume series _The Sacred Texts of Daoism_ was also part of Max Muller's
50 volume series _The Sacred Texts of the East_.
Yes I'll just pick one series and stick with it - again this is a hobby
project that I'm not going to spend ages thinking about corner cases.
A series can have two or more authors. For example, _Star Trek: Deep
Space Nine_ contains books written by half a dozen different authors.
Books set in the same world need not be part of a series, even though
marketing mistakenly claims that they are a series. For example: Anne
McCaffrey's _P.E.R.N._ novels.
Consider how you'll handle spin-of series. For example: _Star Trek: The
Next Generation_ alongside _Star Trek: Deep Space Nine_, alongside _Star
Trek: Corp of Engineers_, etc.
I won't treat them any differently - even if it's not 100% correct to
the author. See above.
Consider how you'll handle trilogies such as Douglas Adams _The
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_, (Officially, it is a trilogy in five
parts, or six parts, if _And Another Thing..._ is included in that trilogy.)
For the Read Status table, you might also want to have tags for
"reread", and "acquired".
###
FWIW, the typical "heavy reader" will take 210 years to read a million
pages:
* "Heavy Reader" being defined as reading 17 books per year.
(http://libraries.pewinternet.org/2012/04/04/part-2-the-general-reading-habits-of-americans/)
* A book is defined as 280 pages (64,000 words) long.
(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/09/book-length_n_1334636.html)
Yes I know the above - FWIW again this is a hobby so I'm not sticking to
"280 pages or more" - that's absurd for a hobby to be so strict. My rule
is just that I don't count a book unless I read the entire thing - this
is unfortunate as I'm in law school reading thousands and thousands of
pages, none of which I'll count ;) But, it's been a 10 year project and
I'm not going to quit on it - even if the reality is it'll be very very
hard to complete. I have a tracker stats sheet on the spreadsheet file
and it shows my current pace and the year I can anticipate finishing . .
. and no, it's not within one lifetime :)
Best,
Joel
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