I was browsing through my online TBR fiction list earlier today looking for a book whose title I could not remember but I was pretty sure I had put it on my list. That’s what these kinds of lists are for right? So I wasn’t worried about not remembering the title, I’d recognize the book when I came to it I was sure. Well, as I was scrolling through the list I came upon a book I actually did read. Given that I had well over 200 items on this fiction list I was pretty pleased that I could take one off. I checked the box next to it and clicked “delete” and when the popup window came up to ask me if I really wanted to delete the item from the list I said “yes.” Except that is not what the popup window was asking me.
Turns out in my still cold medicine addled brain I had clicked on the button not to delete the book from my list, but to delete the entire list. And that popup wanted to know if I was sure I wanted to delete that list of 200+ items. And I clicked “yes.”
List gone. No take backs.
At first I couldn’t believe what I had actually done. Was the list really gone? I clicked to view a list of my lists. Yup, gone. Then I kind of wanted to cry. That list is where I save all the books I think sound really good when I am out and about on the internet reading blogs or other book news. I have no way of recreating this list.
I’ve been trying to comfort myself with things like “Well that’s one way to reduce your TBR pile!” And, “You were never actually going to be able to read all those books anyway.” But it’s not been working very well and pouting just feels so much better. When I told Bookman he immediately suggested I contact WorldCat and ask them if they can recover it from a backup tape or something. Bless my dear beloved for trying to be helpful and not laughing at me. I have no idea if WorldCat would help me out like that, but I am not going to bother to find out. It’s just a list of books and I figure the ones I really want to read will bubble up into my awareness again sometime. And if they don’t, well, I won’t miss them since I don’t remember what they were to begin with.
All the same, I made a new list to save fiction titles to. There is nothing on it. Yet.
Ouch! I feel the loss like it was mine!
Double ouch. A better list would come, after all, we are talking about you here 🙂
Speaking of which, I just got my short story collection and another collection of poetry out. They were both recently shortlisted for National Prizes in Nigeria. Would you mind reading?
Got an e-mail?
LikeLike
su’eddie, ouch is right. It’s not the first time I have lost a list and it probably won’t be the last.
Congratulations on your books! That’s really great. I am kind of swamped with books to review and library deadlines at the moment. Ask me again in a month or two 🙂 There is a link on the left sidebar up towards the top for email.
LikeLike
I think you might have been able to get the list back if you went into the ‘history’ and went back a bit. I’ve managed to recover things by doing that in the past anyway, worth a try.
LikeLike
Pining, I had hoped that too but it only gave me the first page of 10 and when I clicked to see the next page it said it didn’t exist. I could have written down at least the ten titles but I decided if I had lost the list, I lost them all.
LikeLike
Losing Nelson by Barry Unsworth
Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor
LikeLike
Yay! Books for my list! They are the first 🙂
LikeLike
Oh nooooo! Oh no! I am so, so sorry! I keep my TBR spreadsheet in DropBox this days, which is nice because I can access it from anywhere, and if I ever accidentally mess it up, DropBox will restore it for me.
LikeLike
Jenny, thanks. I’m starting to get over it now and seeing it as kind of funny but it does still cause a bit of a pang. I used to keep a spreadsheet I started the online list so I could access it while out and about at bookstores. Also, since it’s WorldCat, with just a few clicks I can connect to my library and request the book. Keeping your list in DropBox is a good idea. I can export my lists so perhaps I should make a regular habit of doing that as a backup.
LikeLike
Ohhhh, crap. I think I would cry too. Surely there’s a way to recover it?
LikeLike
Jeane, if I contacted WorldCat they might be able to restore it for me but I’ve decided it isn’t really worth all the trouble. It is not the first time I have lost a TBR list and it is almost not having all those books looming.
LikeLike
I like your attitude, Stef. Laughing in the face of disaster; snickering in defeat; thumbing your nose at catastrophe. Kinda like the Wizard of Oz. You will re-build!
LikeLike
Grad, ha! You made me laugh! 🙂
LikeLike
Oh, no! What a bummer!
LikeLike
Sarrah, at first it was a real drag but now it’s ok. Though I’m a bit bugged because I still can’t remember the title of the book that I was searching for on my list to begin with!
LikeLike
Maybe it’s time for some creative Googling?
LikeLike
I discovered the title quite by accident late yesterday afternoon. I had it on my library wishlist, somehow thinking that if I had it there I’d be more likely to read it sooner rather than later. In case you are wondering what the title is, Lightning Rods by Helen Dewitt.
LikeLike
Hooray! 🙂 Happy reading!
LikeLike
This is why my list is a paper one. I don’t need a cold addled mind to do something like that, I am perfectly capable of doing it anyway!
LikeLike
Alex, I’ve had disasters with paper lists too. Perhaps it a subconscious safety mechanism; I start to feel overwhelmed by the size of the list and then an “accident” happens.
LikeLike
Fellow feeling, although now I feel luckier than you–yesterday I deleted my entire inbox on my gmail. I meant to delete only the unread messages. As you say, though, I guess the important stuff is going to have to make its way back to the surface.
LikeLike
Jeanne, oh, ouch! I hope there weren’t any really important emails in there!
LikeLike
Last night I told Ron I’d done this, and he said well, it’s all still there in your trash for the next thirty days. He showed me how to retrieve it, which I did, and then I deleted the hundreds of unread emails, which is what I’d actually meant to do.
LikeLike
Wow, what a relief! you got lucky on that one 🙂
LikeLike
That sounds like something *I* would do! When that happens you should try and immediately hit the back button and see if you can get to that pre-delete screen–it may or may not work, but I am always desperate for a solution in cases like that. I guess now you get to start a whole new list and go a little crazy! 😉
LikeLike
Danielle, Oh I did try the back button among other things and it did not work. It is kind of fun having a blank list now, I could put anything on it!
LikeLike
Oh no! What an awful feeling! I’ve lost TBR lists before when I just kept them on my hard drive and didn’t back up regularly. It did feel terrible for a while, but you’re right that many of the books will creep back into your consciousness.
I’ve actually become less and less keen on keeping a long TBR list. I get overwhelmed with it, and I find it impossible to prune. An occasional fresh start can feel like a relief!
LikeLike
Teresa, yes, this accidental fresh start is beginning to feel like a bit of a relief. I might have to seriously consider following your lead and try to be more selective about what goes onto the list.
LikeLike
My husband always warns me to “back it up on a stick if it’s important.” He’s a “I-told-you-so” personality. I love him anyway. Sorry for your lost list, Stephanie, I can relate.
LikeLike
Ouch! I hope you can get over it soon. Is it possible to gradually build up the list through memory? Even worse is remembering a book that I have decluttered and thinking that I would really like to read that again!
LikeLike
Ian, I think I have managed to pretty much get over it since it is now beginning to seem kind of funny. At least it was only a list and not, like you say, a decluttering in which I later regret no longer having the book on my shelf.
LikeLike
Patricia, thing is, I should know better since I used to be in tech. If it were on my laptop it would have been backed up but I get lazy when I save things in the cloud. but it’s not the end of the world! 🙂
LikeLike
And hands up who hasn’t done something similar? I must have told you about the time I accidentally sorted the first 43 pages of a novel I was writing alphabetically and then, in a panic, saved it that way? The TIME it took me to take it out of alphabetical sequence and when I’d done I had a couple of spare paragraphs left over. Who knows where they went? And then I discovered that the novel was actually a bit better in its postmodern alphabetised state….. I can promise you this: the new TBR list you put together will be even better than the old one was. For sure.
LikeLike
Litlove, Oh, I don’t think you’ve told me that story before! What a disaster. But how funny and humbling to discover that the accident made it better. Oh I have no doubts the new TBR list will be even more amazing 😉
LikeLike
Awww Stefanie…that’s awful!! But I agree with litlove…we all have our “moment of disastrous glory”…but don’t worry for somebody like you I can fully guarantee that by the time the week is over, your TBR list will toppleth over!! In the meanwhile, hang in there and please please take care of that cold!!
LikeLike
cirtnecce, thank you, my cold is almost better, barely coughing now. As for the list, I have now settled in to finding it sort of funny and rather freeing. I’ve not gone crazy adding to the new list, but I have no doubts it will grow at a steady rate.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Stephanie, sorry to hear about the TBR loss. The hyperlink for the words ‘online TBR’ in your first sentence takes me to a Worldcat profile called ‘wellred2’, which has 34 lists, inclusing ‘books on books’, ‘gardening’, ‘science by women’ etc. Is this your list, by any chance? Maybe it has not disappeared? (Apologies in advance if I am raising your hopes).
LikeLike
Sharanya, thanks! I’ve resigned myself to its loss. The link does indeed take you to my WorldCat profile and all my various TBR lists. The list I lost is my fiction list, all the others are safe. I have since created a new fiction list though it only has three things on it at the moment. The old fiction list really did disappear. Thanks for being hopeful for me though!
LikeLike
Pingback: Paper Puffs (38) | Paper Breathers
Oh dear … I’d have a cry. I had a list in the Notes app on my iPad of ideas for my Monday musings posts – it had links and notes to support some of those ideas. It was a really good list – except it suddenly disappeared. I’m not sure when but by the time I realised, it was too late to late to UNDO and I couldn’t find it in any backups. All I can think is that I was using notes to draft posts for a travel blog and I was did have a session deleting those drafts. I reckon I must have deleted this note at the same time. I can see no other reason for it disappearing, but you know how you can glaze over when you get on a deleting roll! I’m still sad about it BUT I realise that in the scheme of things it’s not a biggie. I’m sure there are many people win the world who would love losing a record like this to be their worst problem. Right?
LikeLike
whisperinggums, oh no! I’ve deleted what I am sure were drafts of utterly brilliant blog posts before that had Pulitzer Prize written all over them. Seriously though, it is too bad about your notes list. I would say we’ll both pay more attention from now on about what we are deleting but I know that’s probably not going to happen, at least in the long term. But as you say, there are worse problems to have!
LikeLike
Ha ha, that’s right, vigilant in the short term but then a circumstance will happen and poof, off something goes again!
LikeLike