"My 94-year-old grandmother has kept a list of every book she ever read"
June 3, 2024 12:41 AM Subscribe
Ben Myers posted to X last year about his grandmother's reading list, and followed it up a year later after her death. This My Modern Met article summarises the tweets.
This is great. What an eclectic collection! What a life!
My 83-year-old father keeps a reading list now (mainly so that he doesn't repeat books unless he wants to). He reads 50+ books a year. I have no idea how long he's been writing them down.
I keep a list too, and have since 1994: book title and author and one-line summary. It's an excellent way to remember what I've been up to; highly recommended. I don't read 50 books a year though.
posted by chavenet at 12:58 AM on June 3 [4 favorites]
My 83-year-old father keeps a reading list now (mainly so that he doesn't repeat books unless he wants to). He reads 50+ books a year. I have no idea how long he's been writing them down.
I keep a list too, and have since 1994: book title and author and one-line summary. It's an excellent way to remember what I've been up to; highly recommended. I don't read 50 books a year though.
posted by chavenet at 12:58 AM on June 3 [4 favorites]
Whenever I have kept a list, I've found I'm about 70% re-reads. I'd like to get that down slightly to 65%. I have a habit of buying, and being given, the books I think I'd like to read - and that I do really enjoy if I can manage them! - but falling back on the familiar. Right, have inspired myself, will start list again.
posted by paduasoy at 1:03 AM on June 3 [1 favorite]
posted by paduasoy at 1:03 AM on June 3 [1 favorite]
What often excites me when reading is something new bringing back memories
English, German, Serbian, and Hungarian...
She was also a big fan of poetry, and this love of the form is best expressed in the original poems that she wrote
reminds me of Ágota Kristóf, especially The Notebook, a book which awoke passion in Slavoj Žižek (The Guardian)
posted by HearHere at 2:06 AM on June 3 [1 favorite]
English, German, Serbian, and Hungarian...
She was also a big fan of poetry, and this love of the form is best expressed in the original poems that she wrote
reminds me of Ágota Kristóf, especially The Notebook, a book which awoke passion in Slavoj Žižek (The Guardian)
posted by HearHere at 2:06 AM on June 3 [1 favorite]
I love this! My father likewise kept a reading journal that is now mine, and it’s a very tangible reminder of what he valued in reading.
I’ve tried to keep a reading list or journal, but it really didn’t stick until 2016 or so. That was when I started a “Media Consumption” spreadsheet, including tabs for books, movies, TV, comics, art exhibits/catalogues, and gradually adding picture books, performances, and Did Not Finish. It’s been super-useful for many reasons!
posted by cupcakeninja at 3:39 AM on June 3 [3 favorites]
I’ve tried to keep a reading list or journal, but it really didn’t stick until 2016 or so. That was when I started a “Media Consumption” spreadsheet, including tabs for books, movies, TV, comics, art exhibits/catalogues, and gradually adding picture books, performances, and Did Not Finish. It’s been super-useful for many reasons!
posted by cupcakeninja at 3:39 AM on June 3 [3 favorites]
I realized I clicked through to a link compiling all of Žižek's writings for the Guardian, rather than that one review. Apologies!
Anyway, in searching again for the review I was happy to find a fuller study [pdf] (zizekstudies.org) [content note: Žižek has, of course, come to recognize that the notion of such a traumatic "thing" involves a transcendentalization of the Real, which undermines the possibility of an
effective act]
At various times & in various ways I have kept track of books I read, rarely with a method that might be considered systematic (hey metafilter, this is foreshadowing that ima going to share another book with you; if you've lost interest, stop reading now). Bahktin returned to my attention recently, so I checked out what I could get from the library. Partway through the first book I started, I remembered it was one I'd read before. I suppose having written down the book's title a while back might have kept me from picking it up again. I liked that though, the dawning recognition. I have been keeping better notes, lately. This, for example, is what i just wrote down from the other book the library offered:
Our consciousness can rest... only as an aesthetic consciousness, {Bahktin} reaffirmed. "Meaning [smysl, or the sense of a thing in context] cannot (& does not wish to) change physical, material, or other phenomena," he wrote. "It cannot act as a material force. And it does not need to: it itself is stronger than any force."
~Caryl Emerson, The First Hundred Years of Mikhail Bakhtin, 220
posted by HearHere at 5:37 AM on June 3 [2 favorites]
Anyway, in searching again for the review I was happy to find a fuller study [pdf] (zizekstudies.org) [content note: Žižek has, of course, come to recognize that the notion of such a traumatic "thing" involves a transcendentalization of the Real, which undermines the possibility of an
effective act]
At various times & in various ways I have kept track of books I read, rarely with a method that might be considered systematic (hey metafilter, this is foreshadowing that ima going to share another book with you; if you've lost interest, stop reading now). Bahktin returned to my attention recently, so I checked out what I could get from the library. Partway through the first book I started, I remembered it was one I'd read before. I suppose having written down the book's title a while back might have kept me from picking it up again. I liked that though, the dawning recognition. I have been keeping better notes, lately. This, for example, is what i just wrote down from the other book the library offered:
Our consciousness can rest... only as an aesthetic consciousness, {Bahktin} reaffirmed. "Meaning [smysl, or the sense of a thing in context] cannot (& does not wish to) change physical, material, or other phenomena," he wrote. "It cannot act as a material force. And it does not need to: it itself is stronger than any force."
~Caryl Emerson, The First Hundred Years of Mikhail Bakhtin, 220
posted by HearHere at 5:37 AM on June 3 [2 favorites]
I started keeping a reading list in February 1992. I can't remember now if I had any specific reason for wanting to do it beyond just "seems like a good idea." The first book on it is A Soldier of the Great War by Mark Helprin. The most recent book on the list is All Adults Here by Emma Straub (an author I learned about on Metafilter and decided to check out.) One of the best things about the list is that looking it over is a way of remembering my life, because when I see the book titles I remember where I was when I read them and what was going on in my life. I was in a tent in Patagonia with the wind roaring outside. I was backpacking in British Columbia. I was nursing my baby. I was reading on a bench at the tae kwon do place while my kids had their class.
When my first kid reached kindergarten age I also started listing all the books I read aloud to my kids and then the books they read to themselves, because it was useful for the homeschooling portfolio I had to submit at the end of the year. Those lists have been useful over the years for making kid book recommendations on Ask Metafilter.
posted by Redstart at 7:06 AM on June 3 [1 favorite]
When my first kid reached kindergarten age I also started listing all the books I read aloud to my kids and then the books they read to themselves, because it was useful for the homeschooling portfolio I had to submit at the end of the year. Those lists have been useful over the years for making kid book recommendations on Ask Metafilter.
posted by Redstart at 7:06 AM on June 3 [1 favorite]
I started a reading log on Livejournal in 2005 and it was one of the best new year resolutions I came up with (and stuck to) ever. (It's also on Dreamwidth now but it's the same thing.)
Because it's not a spread sheet, every year or also I would make a summary list of books read in the past year, which is always pretty fun. For instance, I wouldn't have noticed that I had such a long streak with great non-fiction books in the past year:
《演奏之外》
"West with the Night"
"The Wager"
《十年一觉电影梦:李安传》
《老派少女购物路线》
"How Far the Light Reaches"
"The Mushroom at the End of the World"
posted by of strange foe at 7:35 AM on June 3
Because it's not a spread sheet, every year or also I would make a summary list of books read in the past year, which is always pretty fun. For instance, I wouldn't have noticed that I had such a long streak with great non-fiction books in the past year:
《演奏之外》
"West with the Night"
"The Wager"
《十年一觉电影梦:李安传》
《老派少女购物路线》
"How Far the Light Reaches"
"The Mushroom at the End of the World"
posted by of strange foe at 7:35 AM on June 3
1,600+ books. One every two weeks on average for 80 years! I have but one question. When did she have time to doom scroll?
posted by JohnnyGunn at 10:28 AM on June 3 [1 favorite]
posted by JohnnyGunn at 10:28 AM on June 3 [1 favorite]
I've kept a list of all my finished books since July, 1995. I'm at 1409 and counting!
I started it when I moved to Duluth MN and started working at a used bookstore, which greatly enhanced my library.
posted by RedEmma at 12:05 PM on June 3
I started it when I moved to Duluth MN and started working at a used bookstore, which greatly enhanced my library.
posted by RedEmma at 12:05 PM on June 3
I only started doing this in 2020 and I wish I'd been doing it sooner! It's so interesting to look back over the list and see what really left an impression. I have always been a big reader, being able to see my list from decades ago would be fun.
I'm much more reliant on an e-reader than I used to be so I cannot just peruse my burgeoning shelves to remind myself of where I have been.
posted by supermedusa at 12:26 PM on June 3
I'm much more reliant on an e-reader than I used to be so I cannot just peruse my burgeoning shelves to remind myself of where I have been.
posted by supermedusa at 12:26 PM on June 3
I began doing this on Goodreads 15 years ago, mostly because my memory was worsening and I didn't want to reread books accidentally. It's also been useful in reminding me of series I may want to finish, and sometimes helps me track down a book I want to recommend to a friend. It never occurred to me that someone else might find it interesting someday, but I'm already at nearly 1000 books; my kids could identify my homesteading phase and different parenting periods and my early pandemic "too spacey to read anything less compelling than a thriller" phase and when my eyesight started to fade (so I started reading less).
posted by metasarah at 12:26 PM on June 3 [1 favorite]
posted by metasarah at 12:26 PM on June 3 [1 favorite]
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posted by paduasoy at 12:44 AM on June 3 [2 favorites]