So, on this day in 1975 I started my reading list. The most recent entry thereto (Thursday the 15th) was book #II.3522 -- and that doesn't include the 536 books I read between August 1975 and April 1981, whereupon my list-keeping was disrupted, causing me to start over with a new numeration that August (August 15th 1981, to be exact. It was a Saturday).
When I started my list I was just about to begin my second year of High School (eleventh grade). My motivation was that I'd read a book and then later forget the author or title. Or I might read one work of a series (say, a mystery novel) and not be sure afterwards which books in that series I had and hadn't read. By writing down the title, author, and date I read it I was much likelier to be able to find a book again shd I need to.
Not everything I read goes onto the list. Things I left out include books I don't read all the way through, which are many, and audiobooks (despite several efforts to maintain a second list for audiobooks unfortunately it's never really taken). Short pieces are taken on a case-by-case basis, sometimes linked together as a single entry. The list doesn't include rpgs or magazines or correspondence or anything posted online (except for e-books of course, which are included in the main list).
Just for fun, here's a cross-section of books I've read.
#I. 1.
The first book, forty-four years ago this week: Nicholas Meyer's THE SEVEN PERCENT SOLUTION, the first of what wd prove a wave of new Sherlock Holmes novels not by Conan Doyle.
The next book that followed was THE SAGA OF KING HEIDREK THE WISE, tr. Christopher Tolkien, the first saga I ever read and still my favorite.
#I. 340.
Forty years ago this week (August 18th 1979): EARTH AND SKY by The Writers' Guild -- the first (and only) release by a writers group I helped organize while in college, an anthology of student-written poetry and prose.
The previous book before this was G. A. L. Burgeon's THIS EVER DIVERSE PAIR (which I later got autographed by the author, both under that name and his real one, Owen Barfield).
The following book was THE TOLKIEN SCRAPBOOK, ed. Alida Becker.
#II. 1175 & 1176 .
Thirty years ago this week (Fri Aug 18th 1989): I finished up SOURCERY by Terry Pratchett (Discworld V, not one of his best) and continued on to read that same day the whole of WYRD SISTERS (Discworld VI, my second reading of this much better book). I spent the next few weeks and again in December slogging through David Edding's utterly generic double quintology, finally giving it up after the eighth book in the ten-book series (and I've never been able to make myself go back and force my way through the last two books).
#II. 2167.
Twenty years ago this week (Sun 8/15 - W 8/18 1999): the SORCERER'S SHIP by Hannes Bok (awful! just goes to show not every oldie is a goodie). Far more interesting were the books before and after it: a prose translation of Chretien's PERCIVAL (with the first two Continuations) and Stephen Jay Gould's QUESTIONING THE MILLENNIUM.
#II. 2797.
Ten years ago this week (in three spurts: M 8.17 - Fr 8/21, Sun 8/23-M 8/24, & Sat Sept 6-Sun 6th 2009): THE PLEASURES OF A FUTUROSCOPE by Lord Dunsany (A posthumous publication of his last novel some fifty years after his death. Pity it's so very bad.).
#II. 3522.
Finished up three days ago (7/10, 7/19, 7/22, Sun 8/11 thr Th 8/15-19): Jeffro Johnson's APPENDIX N.
Between the 500+ books on the First List and the 3522 books on the Second List, that's well over four thousand books. So far.
--JDR
--Current reading: starting back on the third of four books that have been left hanging with on-and-off again reading the last two months or so -- two down (#II.3521 & II.3522), two to go.
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A book list like this is useful in unexpected, incidental ways. You're trying to remember when you took that Amtrak trip from Illinois to Oregon with your wife, and you remember that you were reading Anna Karenina to her -- you check your list, and, bingo, that tells you the approximate time in 1984 when you took the trip. Admittedly, that novel being so long, you can't, from the reading list (which gives just start and finish dates), pinpoint the exact date of the trip, but you're in the ballpark. You also reflect that some people would say it was tempting fate to have read that particular novel to your wife on a train trip, given the importance of trains in Anna's adulterous affair, but never mind.
I started keeping a list at the beginning of January 1974, midway through my freshman year of college. Eventually, I transcribed the entries into a computer file, handily searchable. So that's 45 years I've maintained this list.
It was interesting to see which books I have read the most times. LotR is right up there, at 13 readings, but the most-read book is Lewis's superlative Out of the Silent Planet, at 16. I included it in courses, though, so that helped it with the statistics.
Dale Nelson
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