Reading List

 A number of years ago (2005 or 2006) the ladyfriend gave me this book in which to write down all the books I wanted to read.  (There are additional sections for books lent and what-not, but the "To Read" list dominates.)  And over the years I've done just that.

Yesterday, as I was catching up on the NYTimes Book Review I went to add a couple of books and realized there were pages and pages of books I'd listed and had yet to read.

There were some books that I had read, which had little check marks next to them (I even saw a book on the list above that I'd read but had failed to mark as so.  Bonus!), but for the most part, there are pages of books that I thought I'd like to read that, frankly, I'd forgotten about.  So yes, you guessed it.  I have a new project.  I'm going to start going through the list and reading them.

When I noted the books, I made little notations as to whether they were fiction, nonfiction, poetry, or other (e.g. photobooks, crafting books, etc.) and if fiction, whether they were collections of short stories or not.  Later on, I began to write a brief description because frankly, as noted above, I can't always remember why they're on the list.

Today, I started a list on my library's website of the books they have that are on my list, and I picked up the first one today:  Molly O'Neill's Mostly True.  My goal is to write a brief review here of each book I read from the list.  Of course there are always other books that butt into line, but the idea that I'm actually going to follow up on the books that at one time caught my imagination is really exciting.

A few years ago I remember reading a brief piece by Lisa Moore in The Walrus (I'm pretty sure) about how as she got older she realized that she had a limited number of books she could conceivably read.  That's not the impetus that's moving me (at least consciously); it's more of a "I have all these books on my To Read list; better start working on them now."  I'm a list-maker, and I like to check things off.

Stay tuned for reviews.