Haven't I Already Read This?

Has this ever happened to you? You are either in a bookstore or at the library and you find a book that looks good. Maybe the cover is attractive or you have read something by the same author before. You get home and begin reading and you get this sense of deja vu. You somehow know what the character will say. You know that the young woman running away from home on a dark and stormy night will arrive safely in London by the next page. Sometimes the same book is issued with different covers making you think it is a whole new book. Other times we just forget.

A few years ago I was inspired to start keeping track of what I read. A teenaged girl came into the library with her father looking for some titles. She had a notebook that had belonged to her older sister. One summer her sister had kept a reading journal of the books she read and her observations. The younger sister was doing the same and comparing what she thought of the books to what her sister had written about them. I wasn't too interested in taking the time to write about each book I read, but I realized that keeping a list from year to year would be both useful and interesting.

At first I just kept track in a regular old notebook. One day I was at Half Price Books and they had some more fancy blank notebooks/journals. I found one with characters from the children's book Babar where they were inserted into Seurat's famous painting Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. Reading is important to me so my reading journal deserved something nice. I write across the top of a page "Books Read in 2009" and then list each book title, author and the date I finished it. If I feel rather strongly about it, I might give it a star or write "excellent!" next to it. I only write down books that I actually finish. Sometimes there are long gaps between finished books and I know I had a dry spell with some duds. I probably should keep track of what I didn't finish but I don't want to prejudice myself against a certain title or author. A lot of times I pick them up again later and can't put them down.

I find it helpful when I remember the plot of a book but can't think of the title...if nothing else I can look them up on Amazon.com to see which one it was. "I know I read it last winter and the cover was blue with a castle on a hill...." Also, when I read a book and the way it ends makes me believe there will be a sequel, having this list will help me to keep an eye out for it. I find that keeping a list of the books I have read is kind of like keeping a diary. I can look back and see that once I finished my master's degree and was free to read fun stuff again I read Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake series back to back....and then I had to wait an entire year for the next one. I also find it interesting to see that one year I read over 80 books and the next I only read half that amount. I only wish that I had started keeping this list sooner.