SOL 29/31: I will never run out of books I want to read!

Tracking My Reading Life (SOL 22/31) was a peek inside the two book journals I keep. When I was writing that post, I pulled two additional notebooks off my shelf and decided they deserved their own post. I started the first notebook in January 1997. These notebooks are the repository of book reviews, book recommendations from friends (Stephanie Goodliffe, Jolene Graham, Joan Scales, to name just a few) and lists I would compile while visiting bookstores (3rd Place Books, Powell's Books). The second notebook begins five years after the first one in 2002 and is titled simply "Books I Want to Read."

When I pulled these off the shelf, they were stuffed with newspaper articles, book reviews, and lists created by me. I took the time this morning to weed through these papers and add the ones I wanted to keep to the second notebook. 

 You may wonder why I don't have more notebooks. The second one was started nineteen years ago! Somewhere along the way I moved to putting reviews and book lists into a rather hefty file.  

More than a decade ago, my son saw me writing down titles in a bookstore, grabbed my phone, and said, "Just take a picture, Mom." I've never put all those pictures into a folder of their own, but I'm sure I have a reading list on my phone that reaches into the hundreds (maybe even thousands).  

And that brings me up to how I handle the book reviews I read today. I open my computer and request the title from KCLS, my local library system. If it's one I might not want to read right away, I put it on the For Later Shelf which currently holds133 items. When grandson and I reach our limit for holds when we are requesting picture books, we add them to the For Later Shelf. I should probably go through the shelf with him sometime soon. I like that my latest system keeps me from adding to the paper piles in my house. 

And just in case something were to happen to my digital files and shelves at KCLS, The Unchosen bookshelf at my house currently holds 31 titles. This quote from the Argentine poet Jorge Luis Borges sums up my hope for the afterlife: "I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library."