My two-week vacation is winding down to a close. Tomorrow is back to work and back to library school. It has been a lovely time off with lots of room to read and be generally lazy. I realized last night that I completely forgot about putting together my digital preservation page. Oops.
One thing I have been working on is creating a book database to keep track of the books I have read. I have been using an Excel spreadsheet the last few years and I haven’t been entirely pleased with it. So I installed Open Office and had no idea their database program was so good. I’ve been fussing around with it and think I have come up with a satisfactory database.
I started putting books in it from 1995 when I first began keeping track of my reading. It’s fun looking back that long ago and remembering, oh yeah! that was a good book. More often than not I find I have no recollection of the book at all. I find that I read the Complete Short Stories of Dorothy Parker. Really? Before I saw that on the list I would have said that I have never read Dorothy Parker before but would really like to. I also discovered that I read Isak Dinesen’s Winter’s Tales and have no recollection of it. I have, in fact been wanting to read them “sometime.” I also read Out of Africa that year and remember that one. Why can I remember one and not the other? I find the vagaries of memory both fascinating and infuriating.
Since I never transfered all my books to my Excel spreadsheet I am sure as I go through the lists from long ago I will discover all sorts of books I have forgotten about.
While I was making a book database I also made a recipe database for my Bookman. He is always misplacing recipes he’s scribbled down on scraps of paper or emailed himself. Hopefully the database will solve that problem.
Also during my time off I cleared off almost everything from my desk. It is a vasty cat playground now and almost empty but for my laptop, desk lamp, pencil cup, pencil sharpener and the basket we keep the bills in. Eventually I would love for it to be empty except for my computer, lamp and pencil cup. I’m getting close! I’m not sure why I want my desk so empty. Zen simplicity maybe? Or perhaps it has to do with having room to think with nothing to distract me. Anyway, the cats are just happy that they can both totally spread out which makes it sound like I cleared my desk for them.
Off to go enjoy the remaining hours of my vacation before the whirlwind of Monday morning comes sweeping in.
I should have listen to my mother when she asked me to start a list of the books I read when I was about 12. Ten years later I regret to admit that I can’t even recall more than 20 books that I have read in the past. Shame on me. The list starts now!
-MTO
P.S. By the way, great reading list for the year!
Of course you did it for the cats. Have you forgotten? That basket of clean towels you need to fold? You washed them, set the basket there just for the cats!
See, they have you so trained you didn’t even realize it. You’ll have to share more on this Open Office you downloaded. I am doing an Excel spreadsheet (per your suggestion) and it works pretty well, but there is always room for improvement. And I totally understand about that forgetting all about having read something–I look through my older journal and wonder about some of the books I read! Enjoy the rest of your evening, I’m back to work tomorrow to and am already dreading my alarm clock going off bright and early (though it will be dark not bright at all!)….
Sounds like you had a productive holiday break. I’m back tomorrow as well.
Pretty much all furniture is for the cats, yes? It is at our house, anyway…
The absence of memory of previously read books haunts and interests me. Surely the book exerted some influence. But what? And how to recapture it? Is it reflected in subtle, perhaps unconscious ways? In our likes and dislikes, attitudes and beliefs?
Perhaps you remembered Out of Africa because you saw the film. I am assuming you did. I think this is instructive if it’s the case.
Like Danielle, I’d like to hear more about this Open Office database. I’m using Excel, which for me is WAY better than writing them out by hand, but I’m curious about better options.
How wonderful that you have reading records going back that far! I kept notes as a child and preteen (at my grandmother’s insistence) but then foolishly got rid of them as a teenager. I only started keeping my reading diaries again in 2006 but I love looking back through them.
A clean desk! Did you set out to make me feel guilty?
I hope term goes well.
On a related matter, I read an interesting essay about how we process stories and how our memory can play us tricks because of the way it processes and stores the information we read. Have you ever been convinced that you read something in a particular book and then gone back to find the passage in question and never found it? Most annoying, but it happens all the time!
Good luck with getting back to work, studies, etc.
Creating a database is such a great idea! I will look into Open Office, it sounds like a good solution. I have been doing the handwritten list thing but it is not the perfect option…
I am definitely a Luddite. I began keeping Books Read lists as a teenager and, I hoped, future librarian back in the 1960′s. I wasn’t always consistent, but I have been for the last twenty years or so. I keep a small notebook on my desk and jot the date I finished the book, the title, and the author. At the end of the year, I transfer the information onto regular 8 x 12 paper (I used to use a typewriter, remember those? but now I use AppleWorks) and file them in a 3-ring binder by year. Very easy to access. In addition to the lists, when I finish a book, I write a brief synopsis on a 3 x 5 card (with the date finished on the back) and file it by author in a lovely old oak library catalog drawer.
I’ve been keeping a bibliographical list of my reading since January of 1994. Actually I had kept the list far earlier but somehow lost a lot of it. But I find it very useful, much as you are mentioning, I’ll sometimes look back and see…. hmm… did I read that Thomas Hardy book? Yes, I did! It’s such an awesome resource, to keep track of one’s reading trends.
I sort of keep a list of books read then forget about it midyear. That was annoying this year when I didn’t blog reviews so much so I really must keep some sort of record in 2011. Good on you for having a sort out. As I type this, Mister Litlove is clearing out the file cabinets. You will note that I am reading blog posts rather than helping….. And I once opened a book of Freud’s case studies to find one annotated and underlined and I had no memory of reading it at all. Freud would say I had repressed it!
A clean desk is such a lovely feeling! As is a lazy vacation. I hope your first Monday back isn’t treating you too harshly.
I started a FileMaker Pro database for my reading a few years ago… It goes back to 1998. I would have more if I went through old diaries but I haven’t managed to do that. I’m so glad to find I’m not the only one who has no recollection of some of the books I’ve read. I find it quite depressing.
BTW What data are you recording for the books you read. Enquiring librarians want to know.
Oh, and I wish you a happy day back at work …
I’m considering dropping my book list that I keep in a Microsoft Word document in order to keep track of things on LibraryThing. I’m nervous about trusting a website, although considering my habits when it comes to backing things up, a website might be the better way to go! I’m just trying to cut down on multiple lists and things to update, and I do want to keep LibraryThing current. I wish I had kept a list much longer than I actually have!
I use an excel spreadsheet too. Every year I start off with a new one though. I love the idea of a book database though. I already have a database that I use for the books I have and maybe I should play with that. You’ve given me an idea
I always hate when vacations end! It is so nice to have leisure time to rest, read, and pursue our own interests. Sounds like you have found a great way to capture your reading through the years. I used to keep lists in a notebook (before Internet) and always enjoyed looking back at the list and remembering what I read. I’m like you in that I always came upon books on the list that I couldn’t remember reading or not even what the book was about. It infuriated me too!