Keeping a List
A few years ago I learned something brilliant from my wife. She told me that for several years she had kept a list of all the books she’d read and the month and year in which she’d read them, and sometimes she even noted where she was when she read them. I couldn’t believe I’d never thought of that.
Now that I’ve been doing it for a while, I can see how it really functions as a cheap and easy autobiography, among other things.
I can look back at January 2008 and see that I was reading Down in New Orleans: Reflections from a Drowned City, by Billy Sothern, and I remembered that I checked it out because we’d spent a few days in New Orleans and wanted to learn more about Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. I’d picked up a few other books about New Orleans and Katrina, but Billy Sothern’s personal chronicle was the one that gripped me enough to finish and think about a lot afterwards.
The chronological book list is also handy for remembering if I actually read a book or not. It’s a little surprising–and probably a lot shameful–how I can look back at the list and run across a title I’ve completely forgotten reading. (March of the Hooligans: Soccer’s Bloody Fraternity, back in November of ‘07? You’d think I would have remembered that one, but sadly no.)
The wife sometimes accuses me of list-inflation. I can see that back around Halloween of 2007 I proudly listed Extreme Pumpkins: Diabolical Do-It-Yourself Designs to Amuse Your Friends and Scare Your Neighbors among the books I’d read, and she accurately noted that I probably didn’t carefully study each chapter of that one and reflect on it deeply afterwards. It’s also true that I didn’t even carve a pumpkin that year. Nevertheless, the pictures in that book are totally awesome, and I’m keeping it on the list.
I’ll occasionally break protocol and include a particularly good (or a particularly long) magazine article in the list. Looking back, I notice that I’ve done this more often in months when I’ve hardly read any books, so I’m sure it is in part just a way of keeping the list going and not becoming too ashamed of my own laziness.
It’s also handy working in a library because occasionally I come across a cool-looking children’s book, or one I remember from my distant childhood, and they fill up the slow reading months on the list quite nicely.
I guess in some way the list is one factor that’s always keeping me looking for and reading more books. I’m not necessarily in a competition with myself to top the previous month’s or year’s number, but it is a nice little ritual and a moment of satisfaction when I close a book I’ve finished and enter its title and the date in my slowly growing life-long reading list.
