Monday, 25 May 2009

The past 6 years

I've been recording the books that I've read since January 2003 in a spiral bound, George from Rainbow, notebook that I bought just before I went to college in 2002. It's an invaluable record of everything I've read (with the exception of the books that had to be read as part of my two degrees) since then. However, I decided this weekend that it is time to go digital, and make a transcription of it. I don't intend to give it up - it's much easier to make a quick note of a book that's just been finished in a notebook lying handily on the side than to switch on a computer and record it in excel. But it will be useful to have a record that's a bit easier to search: I often find myself wondering "have I read that?" and then having to look back through my untidy scribbles.
It's been an interesting task - I'm surprised at how good my recall is of the majority of the books, and I'm interested by the way my reading goes in spurts of certain subjects or certain authors. I'm also slightly shocked that 3 books currently sitting on the tbrbc have already featured, back in 2004 (Loving / Henry Green; The Kiss / Joan Lingard; Slipstream / Kate Bingham). Shocking! I had my suspicions about Slipstream, and now I think about it I can remember the Kiss, but I don't remember much about Loving at all. It's nice to reread books however, and I have a code (RR) in my notebook which I use to denote books that I'm rereading (I also note autobiographies (AB), biographies (B) and children's books (C)). However, with 200-300 books read each year, it's going to be a long task of writing it up.

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