An integral part of managing your reading is organising your books and their read status. On Bookwyrm, you use Shelves for this.
To get to the shelves page, select the 'Your Books' link at the top of the website. The tabs are your shelves, as well as an 'All books' view.
Bookwyrm comes with four default shelves: To Read, Currently Reading, Read and Stopped Reading. These are used to track the reading status of each of your books.
When browsing books on Bookwyrm, there is a button below or beside each book, used to update its reading status.
For each book, BookWyrm expects the reading flow of Not shelved -> To read -> Currently reading -> Read.
The default option for the button will move the book to the next stage in the sequence.
For example, a new book is 'Not shelved' yet, so the button will suggest adding it to your 'To read' shelf.
Once on 'To read', the next step is to start reading it, which will move it to 'Currently reading'.
At any time, you can use the dropdown arrow to skip steps in the sequence and manually select any reading status for the book. There is also an option to add it to your 'Stopped Reading' shelf, for books you do not want to finish (DNF).
A book can only be on one of the four reading status shelves at a time. When you update your reading progress, the book is moved from one shelf to the next. This means that if you're reading a book for a second time, it will be put on Currently Reading and not on Read, even though you had read it before.
When starting and finishing a book, you are prompted to confirm the start and finish dates. These can be seen on a books page under the 'Your reading activity' subtitle. If you manually add read dates, keep in mind that it won't automatically shelve the book.
In the same pop-up screen you confirm reading dates, you have the option to post a reading status update to your feed. These will appear in the feeds of people who follow you, and have similar visibility settings as most things in Bookwyrm.
Use 'Finish reading' when you've finished reading a book.
'Stop reading' is for books you don't want to keep reading, also known as a DNF (did not finish).
Custom shelves are completely separate from the reading status shelves.
You can add any book to a custom shelf by using the dropdown menu on the shelf/reading status button. Once you've created new shelves, they will be displayed there and selecting one will add it.
As opposed to the built-in reading status shelves, a book can be on multiple custom shelves at once. It could also be on a reading status shelf at the same time as one or more custom shelves, or just on a custom shelf.
You can add a description to any shelf by selecting the shelf and then 'Edit shelf'.
Currently, the only available filter is by keyword, which searches against the title and author.
By default, your shelves are all Public. To restrict a shelf to Followers-only or Private, navigate to it and select 'Edit shelf'. For more information, see the privacy controls page.
The default tab on the 'Your books' page is 'All books'. It simply displays any book that is on at least one of your shelves. Books on Follower-only shelves will only be displayed there to you and your followers, and books on Private shelves only to you.