I wish I had kept a list of every book I have ever read.
It is impossible to re-create that full list. But I am capturing data on GoodReads now.
When the GoodReads list is mostly complete, the whole list will roll/upload to another app. That app, Story Graph, is the actual goal. It will look at what I have read, and liked, and make author suggestions for me.
I try to record accurate “read dates” on GoodReads, but that is not always possible. If I am not sure “when”, then I simply enter books as “read” when I think of them.
Rating the books on GoodReads is easy, there are few books I have read that I do not like. Most of the books on my read list are rated a 4 or a 5. (I wish the app used a scale of 1-10. So I could better designate what I loved and what I really loved.)
Normally, if I do not like a book, I do not finish it.
Those books I read, but did not like, are most likely book club assignments, detailed in a past blog post. Those are rated a 1. The only two I can remember off hand are The Confederacy of Dunces and Winesburg Ohio, both definite 1’s.
An advantage I have is I tend to read by author. So if a book or author occurs to me, the GoodReads app makes it very easy to check off multiple books by that one author. When I have the author pulled up, all the books listed, I remember which ones I have read. (And I find ones I have missed.)
I thought of Sue Grafton recently. Looking at the nice long list of William Kent Krueger’s books, last Friday’s post, made me think “that is as good a find as Sue Grafton!”.
PS -
If you like mystery style books and she is new to you, her Kinsey Millhone series is a nice long list.
