Books I Have Read
I read fiction books to relax my mind, and to escape for a while. I mainly read in the late evenings as I try to turn off my mind from the day's activities. In the late 1990's, after I retired I wanted to conserve my money, but I needed to keep on reading. So I rediscovered the joy of the public library system. Since I normally only like to read a book one time, this was the perfect solution. I started by using the Chandler, AZ library, which had a large collection of books.
I developed my method of using a library. I would walk in and look at the New Books shelves. Chandler had normally two full book cases of new books. I would pick 2 or 3 to read and check them out. If I liked one of the authors, I would look for that author the next time. I branched from the New Books section to the stacks where the books were grouped by author. I would start with the author's oldest published book, and read that author two or three books at a time. If the author held my interest, I would continue until I exhausted the library's supply.
After a few years of reading 2-3 books per week, I realized that I could not always remember whether I had read a book when seeing it upon the library shelf. So I developed a system of tracking what I read using an Excel spread sheet on my home computer. That worked great for a while, until I got over 400 books on the list. So I decided to put the list online.
By this time, 2007, I had transitioned to the Maricopa County library system. The local library gives us access to the Internet so I could now access my list from the library. That way, if I saw a book or author I was not sure about, I could research my books read list and quickly decide if the author was interesting or the book a duplicate of what I had previously read.
I just updated my list today, and put the latest online. So I thought I would share it with you. You are welcome to take a look at my Books I Have Read, and see if there is anything there that interests you. I mainly like legal thrillers, mystery, and military history books. And sometime a good spy novel. Enjoy.
I developed my method of using a library. I would walk in and look at the New Books shelves. Chandler had normally two full book cases of new books. I would pick 2 or 3 to read and check them out. If I liked one of the authors, I would look for that author the next time. I branched from the New Books section to the stacks where the books were grouped by author. I would start with the author's oldest published book, and read that author two or three books at a time. If the author held my interest, I would continue until I exhausted the library's supply.
After a few years of reading 2-3 books per week, I realized that I could not always remember whether I had read a book when seeing it upon the library shelf. So I developed a system of tracking what I read using an Excel spread sheet on my home computer. That worked great for a while, until I got over 400 books on the list. So I decided to put the list online.
By this time, 2007, I had transitioned to the Maricopa County library system. The local library gives us access to the Internet so I could now access my list from the library. That way, if I saw a book or author I was not sure about, I could research my books read list and quickly decide if the author was interesting or the book a duplicate of what I had previously read.
I just updated my list today, and put the latest online. So I thought I would share it with you. You are welcome to take a look at my Books I Have Read, and see if there is anything there that interests you. I mainly like legal thrillers, mystery, and military history books. And sometime a good spy novel. Enjoy.
posted by sunlaker @ 11:46 AM
2 Comments:
At 10:35 AM,
Anonymous said…
A friend of mine had the same problem remembering which books he had read so he started to place a small light pencil check mark on the bottom of page 28 of every book he read from the library. Then when a book title attracted him he would just look at page 28 to see if he already read it.
At 10:53 PM,
sunlaker said…
That's a clever way. Unfortunately, I get books from many different libraries (via title requests). I also buy paperbacks from out libraries recycling/donation room. At only 25 cents each, I usually buy 4 or 5 to have something on hand if I go on trips.
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