I often refer in this blog to my "little green book", a record I began keeping in 1975 that shows title, author, and date when I completed reading the book.On 1 January 2000 I graduated to a little red book because the bindings that held the green book together were disintegrating. By the end of this year the two books between them will hold list about 2,800 books read over a period of 34 years. I read more now than I used to. That has a lot to do with the little birds having flown the nest.
What I can also track from the records is my growing interest, indeed passion, for reading crime fiction, and the authors who have been most influential in shaping my reading tastes.
As well as the notebook, I have been keeping an electronic database since the end of 2004, and have 478 books recorded in there. The database allows me to record more description, and also has the advantage of being searchable by keywords and dates etc.
Since April 27 2007, I have been adding records to Library Thing. I now have 262 books recorded on there, all with reviews.
And of course since the beginning of this year I have been publishing all my reviews on this blog. You can see them all on Smik's Reviews. According to database, and the little red book, there should be 95 of them there, but I haven't really counted them.
Do you keep records of your reading?
How do you do it? A notebook, a spreadsheet, a database, my blog, Library Thing, Shelfari, other online utility, other means.
I have a poll running for the next 10 days or so on my blog.
Check the gadget out in the right hand panel.
3 comments:
I have a crummy little spiral bound school notebook I record them in, and I must upgrade to something more stylish and brightly coloured. The notebook is grey and so easy to lose in the piles of papers and books around my house.
Alas, my detailed records I kept of books I'd read since childhood disappeared in one of our many shifts, so this notebook only goes back to 2003.
I also started an Goodreads a while back, but have been extremely lax on keeping it updated as the blogging thing takes up enough of my time, let alone extras. I haven't even touched the black hole of time that is facebook.
I use my blog as my primary record, but I also have several spreadsheets that I maintain.
I did join Librarything at one point but I am very behind in maintaining it!
That's a great idea. I have always been an avid reader since I was 5 years old and fell in love with Alice in Wonderland. I would lose myself in reading and eventually devoured our family library right down to medical journals and automotive books. I basically ran out of things to read. I would lose track of time at the library, and now walking into a bookstore is euphoric; it would also explain my eventually becoming an English Literature major in college.
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