THE REMEMBRANCE OF BOOKS PAST; My Life as a Reader (Part II)

This post is dedicated to my book group - Bev, Catherine, Karen, Linda, (and Kay, who is smiling on us from beyond the veil.) Thank you for accompanying me for 30-plus years through the reading of books that we have loved or reviled.  (We certainly have learned not to trust the book-jacket descriptions, haven't we?)

Back in January, I wrote Part I of this post, fully intending Part II to be my next effort.  Instead, the pandemic came along and other topics began to feel more pressing.  Then, when I felt ready to get to part II, a post about books addressing racism niggled at me to be written, and so I put off the second part again.

Now, in order to finish with this topic, I give you Part II.

In Part I, I told you how many books I had read last year.  You might have wondered how I was able to come up with that number.  Well, about three years ago, having noticed that I would forget whether I had read a book or would remember I had read a book but could not remember what it was about, I started keeping a list of the name, author, and a brief description of each book I finished. So, when I wanted to count up how many books I had read last year, I had only to consult my list, which is organized by month and year.  

Once I started keeping this list, I found myself wishing I had begun it when I was 12 or 13 or whenever it was that I moved beyond the young-people's section in the library.  What I wouldn't give for such a list.  So, I decided to take things a step further and try to make a list of all of the books I could remember ever having read.  I know.  I know.  This may seen a bit OCD or even, dare I admit it, nuts.  But, stay with me.  

Of course, there is no way I will ever remember all of the thousands of books I have read in my lifetime.  And, no, I did not sit down and try to do it all at once.  I simply opened a file and every time I remembered a book, I added it.  

And then it got to be a kind of treasure hunt.  In order to prompt my memory, I would periodically, envision myself at a time and place in my life and try to remember what I had been reading.

There I am at 11, reading Anne of Green Gables and all of its sequels.  At 12 or so, I am reading Betty Smith (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and Maggie-Now).  

Now I see myself at 16, spending the summer reading A Tale of Two Cities and The Scarlet Pimpernel and Mutiny on the Bounty. (My adventure phase).

What was I assigned in high school?  I can remember Seize the Day (Bellow) and The Catcher in the Rye, along with the rest of Salinger's output, and that's about it, although I know there were many, many more.

There I am at 23, curled up in a chair reading Blackberry Winter by Margaret Mead and all of Margaret Drabble.  And, of course, pouring over the feminist bible - Our Bodies Ourselves. A couple of years later, I am sitting in a different chair in a different state reading The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing and all of Galsworthy's The Forsythe Saga, along with Fear of Flying by Erica Jong and a biography of Zelda Fitzgerald by Nancy Milford. 

In my early thirties, I see myself reading John Nichols and Herman Wouk and and Herman Hesse and Marge Piercy and who else?

Picturing myself in various armchairs in various apartments or houses only got me so far, so I tried other memory prompts. Here are a few of those prompts, with some examples of the books I came up with.

The books I read as a college English major:  All of Henry James, but especially The Portrait of a Lady; Mark Twain and Sinclair Lewis; Balzac and Mann; Fitzgerald and Hemingway.  When I call these authors to mind, I am struck by the fact that we weren't being offered much written by women, and, as I noted in my last post, there was nothing by black or brown authors.  I hope that has changed in nearly 50 years. 

The books I read during college that were not assigned:  The Autobiography of Malcom X; The Liberation of Lord Byron Jones (Jesse Hill Ford).

The books I might not have discovered if not for the voracious readers in my book group:  Telex From Cuba (Rachel Kushner);  Brown Girl Dreaming (Jacqueline Woodson).

The books I pressed on everyone:  How to Change Your Mind (Michael Pollan); Bel Canto (Ann Patchett).

The books I struggled to understand:  Astrophysics for People in a Hurry (Neil DeGrasse Tyson); A Brief History of Time (Stephen Hawkins.

The page turners: Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follet): Lonesome Dove (Larry McMurtry).

I won't bore you with further examples.  You get the idea.

Here's the thing.  My life is full.  I do not have time for this project and I have mostly given up on it.  Nor can I recommend that you try it.  

What I do recommend is that you start now to make a list of the books you read as you finish them.  Looking back on the books I have read since I started keeping my list three years ago, I can see how one book led to another. I can see when I was looking for something meaningful and when I was looking for escape.  My sentence about each book reminds me which ones I loved, which were just OK, and which were a waste of my time. 

What I am creating is a sort of literary autobiography.  

So, if you too are an avid reader, you might try this method of creating your own record. It takes almost no time if you do it as you go along.  (And, who knows, you might find you are able to jog your memory of that book you kind of think you might have read two years ago . . .)




Photo by Gaelle Marcel on Unsplash