Start a Book Reading Diary

When I was only 10, the city library was one of my favorite places. It was only a block out of my way when I came home from school each day, so I often arrived at our front door with an armload of books from my latest visit to the library. I remember telling the librarian one time that I was going to read every book in the library. She smiled and said she thought that would be wonderful.

I thought it would be wonderful, too, and started with the A's. I think I managed to plow through one whole shelf before it dawned on me that I was wasting a lot of time reading stuff I didn't even understand, or like, when I could be reading all kinds of interesting books more suited to my age, so I dropped my plan and decided to read all the really interesting books in the library. You've probably guessed, I failed at that plan, too, but I did manage to read a hefty number of them.

Although I continued reading a lot, one thing I didn't do that I really wish I had done was to keep a list or diary of the books I read. The idea of keeping a book dairy came to me when a friend told me that she had kept a daily diary in spiral notebooks from the time she was 12. She was 47 when she told me that so she had a number of shelves filled with spiral notebooks in one of her bedrooms.

My friend's diary notebooks weren't for recording the crushes she had on a particular boy in school (although I suppose some of those were in there), but they were just a short summary of her day. Just imagine, having a summary-even a very short one-of every day of your life since you were 12 years old. I can imagine all the arguments that could be solved by going back to such a record.

For example, "Remember that summer in 1964 when I broke my leg because you jumped off the teeter-totter without telling me ahead of time?" "No way. It had to be 1967, in August." "You are wrong. I remember it was 1964 because that was the year we moved into town." And on and on and on, but it could be quickly solved if one had kept a simple little bedtime summary in a spiral notebook.

My friend's notebooks were summaries of her days, which is a noble goal, but for purposes of this article, I am suggesting that we begin right now to keep a spiral notebook record of the books we read, and that we encourage our kids to do the same.

My granddaughter decided she would enjoy doing this so I set a notebook up for her.

At first she would often call me to tell me about new books she had added to her "Book Diary," and we were both quite impressed, after the first month or so, with how many books she was actually reading. Later, when the Book Diary became a regular habit, I heard about individual titles less often, but she is still keeping the diary.

On the front of her notebook, she put her name and the words, "Books I Read In 2007."

(She wanted to have a new notebook for every year.) Inside, all on one line, she wrote the title of the book, the author, how many pages it had, and the date she completed the book. Then she skipped a line and wrote a brief summary of the books contents. The summary for some books was only a few sentences and for other books a few paragraphs.

At the end of her summary she rated the book from 0-3 with 3 meaning that she would highly recommend the book and 0 meaning that she wouldn't recommend it at all. Another line was skipped before she entered another title. Of course, she numbered the entries so she could tell at a glance how many books she had read. The second year, she began numbering from where she had left off the year before.

My book diary, I'm ashamed to say, isn't nearly as well-kept as that of my grand-daughter. I do manage to get the title and author in there for most books I read and a brief comment on why or why not I would recommend the book to other people. Sometimes I notice that every book on my list is the same type of book, and decide that maybe it's time to branch out a little bit and try something new

Where I really fall down is in writing the brief summary of the book. I'm always too eager to start the next book to spend a lot of time writing about the last one. One of these days, I plan to put my book diary on my computer, and since writing on the computer is easier for me than writing by hand, I will probably do better at keeping up on my summaries that way.

If I use a database setup, I can have the books displayed in alphabetical order by title or by author's last names. Then when someone recommends a book to me, I can tell at a glance whether or not I have already read it. (Yes, I do have those senior moments when I actually start to read a book, and don't discover until I am well into chapter 3 that I have read it before.)

I, like my granddaughter, am really impressed with how many books I actually do read. When you just read them and go on to another without noting the title somewhere, you lose track in a hurry, especially when you do a lot of reading.

It is nice to go to your Book Diary now and then and review some of the books you have read recently, or to take a stroll down memory lane by reviewing the books you read many years ago. And, perhaps best of all, you now have a handy list of good books to recommend to others.

With the plethora of books available to the avid reader today, it is easy to waste a lot of time starting books only to find out they are not worth spending time on. How much better to have a book highly recommended by a friend-perhaps even a friend who has conscientiously kept a book diary and can check out his or her comments on the book before recommending it to you?

If the idea of a Book Diary sounds interesting to you, I urge you to give it a try. If there are children in the house, include them in the project. It's a good way to get them interested in doing more reading as well as teaching them to observe and record what they have read in their summaries.