So, while I had all the pieces of my reading list out and in one place, I decided to look at things from the other end, starting from the first entry and running all the way up to the present day.
The first list, starting in August 1975, ran to book #536 when it broke off in April 1981 --not because I decided to quit but because I lost the little notebook that had the most recent entries in it, accidently leaving it on the Underground. I restarted the list that August (1981) and have kept it going ever since. This second list now runs to 3688 books.
Finally, after I'd lost the entries that shd have made up the most recent entries of the first list, I jotted down all the books I cd remember that I read during that gap. I came up with twenty-six titles -- not all, but better than nothing.
So, while my math skills aren't what they were, I make out the total from all three lists as this:
First List: 536 books
Lacuna: 26 books
Second List: 3689 books and counting.
536 + 26 + 3689 = 4250.*
And counting.
--JDR
*or, I shd say, 4251, since I finished another book while drafting this post ---STILETTO, the latest by Daniel O'Malley, a disappointing sequel to his excellent, Classics of Fantasy worthy THE ROOK.
1 comment:
I've kept a reading log from January 1974, and maybe someday I'll go through my records and track how many different books I've read. This would be a much lower number than the number of books I've read, because I reread a great deal. A few years ago I started a list of books I'd read the most times; there was one I'd read 16 times, but that was not only because I love it but because I taught a frequently-offered course in which it was assigned. There must be many dozens of books I've read at least three times.
Dale Nelson
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