My book list.

My mentor, the local and accomplished Western writer, Dwight Newton, advised me 41 years ago to keep a notebook and list the books I've read. So I've been doing that since 1982. I've kept it up, filling one entire notebook (I used to joke that when the book was filled, I'd probably be dead and sure enough, I filled the book about the time I had my heart attack, which in non-modern times probably would have killed me.)

I started a second notebook a few years back. It feels like reincarnation.

For the first decade or two, the notebook was very handy. I would find the copyright of a book and look at every entry in the years after the publishing date, and see if I'd read the book. But it's become so long and cluttered that I rarely do that anymore. 

Last night, I was looking up Walter Jon Willams', "City on Fire." I'd read "Metropolitan" and liked it a lot, and this was the sequel, published in 1997. 

The listings were a mess. I trudged through about twenty years. As I did so, I realized that the list was full of titles and authors I had no memory of. I couldn't tell you what they were about. I saw that a few times I read books twice and didn't even realize it.

My memory sucks. 

If I have the time, I'm going to post this list on Goodreads, and arrange it by author, date, and title, and then the list might actually be useful to me again. Plus, I'm intrigued to find out how many books by how many authors I've read. 

It's all a blur, but some titles and authors stand out. I guess that's the real test of time.