Books. Yeah, books. The too much stuff thread on the rpg board got me to thinking and i'm a raging bibliophile. I've never thrown or given away a single book i've bought (and i buy more than i can ever read). I never break the spine of paperbacks - books that are 25 years old and have been read several times are almost in shop condition.
But that isn't it. I was wondering whether anyone else keeps a 'books read' log.
Every book i read, i log - Title, Author, Genre, Date started, date finished, rating out of 4 starts and a special notation for a re-read. I started this in 1993 and have since logged every paperback or hardback i've ever read. I remember seeing a documentary about some guy in the mid-west of America who had a huge library of western paperbacks. He wrote inside the front cover when he read them, each time he read them. I thought that was a cool idea and have done it ever since (not in the book itself but in an old diary).
Interestingly, the only book i've read in that time that i have given a full 4 stars to is The Tooth Fairy by Graham Joyce.
Am i alone in keeping a books read journal?
I don't but I think that's a great practice.
I knew someone who kept a similar file, not so much as a record of readings but simply to keep track of the books themselves, including a few brief notes on the content of each book. He said it helped him enormously when he later did his Ph.D.
I used to, in school and a bit afterward. Then I left it off and haven't thought of it for a while. I do keep a spiral notebook by me and take notes when I'm reading Pynchon or Eco or such. But that winds up just as my commentary, notes, concordance for each particularly dense book, not a running commentary on my reading life. Pat Conroy recently wrote a book about the books he's read.
I keep a running list on my LJ. It's fun to once in a while go back through it and reminisce.
I don't even bother recording down such information anymore.
If I don't read further in a fiction book, it will most likely never be finished.
When I was a kid my best friend's dad did this. He also introduced me to genre fiction and has pretty much been my role model in all things for my entire life, but I don't do this. Maybe I should.
Its weird that I don't see the attraction in this at all. I am an inveterate reader, and at least in my gaming habits I am an obsessive completionist, what with lists and all that so I could check off things, make sure I got it all, even the useless stuff..
But I have never been tempted to actually log or note books I've read. I guess I figure if I like it enough I'll remember it, and if I don't remember it, but I liked it, that gives me an excuse to re-read it.