Reading: Seventeen Years And 2,132 Books

Way back in 1992 I started listing books I'd read in a blank-paper book. More recently I've also put the list in a computer database. As of today the total is 2,132. Some of those were graphic novels or collections of comics, some were art books, some were trivial humor or very light mysteries, some were sports, but there was also a lot of worthwhile stuff there. I'm going to start listing some of them here (and new ones as they are read and added to the list), with a comment or two if the spirit moves me.

If nothing else, it will help me remember what I've read: looking back I can already see several titles which I have no doubt that I did read, but frankly don't recall. The first four books listed were Michael Seidel's Streak: Joe Dimaggio And The Summer of '41, Susan Jacoby's Wild Justice: The Evolution Of Revenge, Robert K. Logan's The Alphabet Effect: The Impact Of The Phonetic Alphabet on The Developoment Of Western Civilization, and Colin Renfrew's Archaelogy And Language: The Puzzle Of Indo-European Origins.

Seventeen years ago I read all of these. If I picked them up again today (those were all library books - who can afford to buy this many titles nowadays?), I'm sure I'd nod in memory at the content. But now I just draw a blank. Maybe they just weren't all that memorable, because there are certainly many others I've read in these two decades that I recall very well, and would even without this list.