What if I remove an Early Reviewer book from my collection?

I have received four, and disappointingly, so far have not been super keen on three of them (haven't yet read the fourth). It's my preference to remove books I don't really care for from my collection (as I'm not likely to re-read them), and to keep my catalog accordingly updated. But if I remove the Early Reviewer books from my catalog, that also means the review I wrote for them is removed from the system, correct? will that then lower my "rating" and chances of getting more Early Reviewer books?

I know I could keep the title in my catalog and give away the actual physical book, but it bothers me to have the count not correct.

Right.

You might want to make a 'no longer owned' collection.

>2 MarthaJeanne: And have it keep a separate count, like I do for the family's picture book collection . . . That makes sense. Thanks.

>3 jeane: Actually the standard collection 'read but unowned' works well. I also use it for (public) library books. It's great for these, "Oh, this looks interesting moments" when I can check on my iPad. Oh, yes, I borrowed it three years ago and gave it 2*.

I have a "Got rid of" collection which I use for this purpose. Come to think of it, I should do some purging; my shelves are getting full.

My deaccessioned books go into "Read but Unowned" with a deaccession date in the comments field, if I have actually read them (especially if I have reviewed them!). Otherwise, they are deleted. "Used to Own" isn't an interesting datum to me. LTER could be an exception in this case, but hasn't been so far.

Yeah, I only use "Used to own" if I want to save a review or something; otherwise I just delete the record.

Sometimes I delete the record, but mostly I want the record that I tried to read the book so I don't waste time on it again. These go in 'Other discards'. I see that collection is up over 500. (It also includes a lot of stuff I acquired over the years that I never intended to read.)

Thanks for all the suggestions! I really do only use LibraryThing for books I own, if I had a collection for 'read but unowned' it would be enormous! My book blog is where I keep track of all the borrowed books I read.

>8 MarthaJeanne: Why do you acquire books you never intend to read? Just curious

>10 jeane: We got a lot of books from both sets of parents back when we had a shipment coming. At that point it was very difficult and expensive to get English language books in Vienna. So a ready made library of classics and other things seemed like a good idea. And certainly, Jerry and I read a few of them, the children had access to them.

Now, of course, at least some of them can be easily accessed on the web. The Vienna library is a very different place from then, and has an amazing amount in English. The bookstores carry English as well as German. There is Amazon. I also read German a lot better than I could then.

But that was back in the days when there was no internet. Telephones were attached to the wall with wires. (And international calls were very expensive.) I never quite got desperate enough to tackle Moby Dick or War and Peace! but I read and reread the Jules Verne.

I no longer acquire books just because they are available, but back then, any book in English was a treasure. But even now, now and then someone will come along with books on one of my subjects that they want to give to a good home. It's very hard to say no, both to the books, and to the friend for whom I seem to be the last resort. And deep inside is still the girl who was afraid of running out of reading material. My 'To read' collection is down to 181. What if the supply of books were to dry up? I might yet be happy to get some of those classics down. (But probably not those two. Not even if they weren't already in 'Other discards'.)

>9 jeane: Unless you disabled it when you first created your account, the Read but Unowned collection is a preset collection that Librarything provides. Even if you disabled it, you should be able to go into the collection manager to reactivate it for use.

>11 MarthaJeanne: Thanks for that explanation. I think I would gather any books that came my way, in that situation too!
I remember well the days of no internet, and a phone with a long spiral cord on the wall (that anyone in the family could pick up from another room and listen in on your conversation) Didn't have internet in our house until I was a teen, didn't have email until I was in college- and it was a pain to use so I rarely did. It feels like such a different world, now. But I smile to think that if the power went out for weeks, I'd be fine in all the daylight hours (or candles / flashlights at night perhaps) with my waiting TBR of 700 books (plus all the beloveds on my permanent shelves that I'll happily re-read if I ever get the time to do so)

I've never tried to tackle War and Peace, but I did read Moby Dick at least once!

We got a computer at home while I was in hospital having my third child. Mostly because Jerry needed to be able to do some work while caring for the older boys. It was a longer time than we had anticipated, and I wasn't allowed to drive for a few weeks afterwards.

BTW it used to be illegal here to have phones that you can listen in on. Luckily when they were installed in our house, the techie explained this and said that's why this little switch is set like this, and not like that. It is a real pain not to be able to pick up the second phone if you are upstairs and someone picked a call for you up downstairs, or not to be able for both phones to be used in a family call at Christmas. Somehow that little switch got switched.

Oof, I just discovered this the hard way, deleting an Early Reviewer book from my collection (because I gave it to a friend) and noticing that it affected my reviewing score. I just assumed that I could delete the book and my review would still exist, but clearly that's not the case. Is there any way to get my review back??

>15 CTW:

The only way to get your review back is to put the book back into a collection and re-write the review. (If you’ve saved it somewhere, of course, you can always cut-and-paste it.)

Many people create a separate collection for books they have read but no longer own (or, in cases such as library or borrowed books, have never owned). Putting a reviewed but deaccessioned ER book would keep the review on LT.

>15 CTW: You can try emailing info @ librarything.com and ask if they can restore the deleted item for you.

>1 jeane: As a number of members have mentioned, deleting the book from your catalog will also delete the review, and you will no longer receive credit for it, in the Early Reviewers program. This is because reviews are not independent of the book itself. You cannot review any book on the site, ER or otherwise, without first having it in your LibraryThing catalog.

I would recommend creating a custom collection for such books (again, members have suggested this as well).

>15 CTW: Yes! I have just responded to your PM, but for general information, we can undelete your copy of the book (provided it is in your deleted books log), which also undeletes your review.

Anyone needing help with this can message me directly, here on the site, or email me at abigailadams@librarything.com

>18 AbigailAdams26: Yes, thank you. Thanks to everybody for the answer to my question. I've made a catalog for 'no longer own' and am using that for now.