Earlier this year a book was published that gave me another list of books to read.
Back in October while at the library I saw this book in the New Books area.
I picked up 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die: A Life-Changing List by James Mustich and brought it home. A quick scan through the list of books showed that I had only read about 300 on the list. Of course I had to check the list twice to see exactly how many.
I used a copy of the checklist in the back of the book and came up with 308.
I then realized that a spreadsheet would make it easier to keep track of what books I need to find and to keep track of what I have read.
So, the typing began to get all 1000 books into the spreadsheet.
With the spreadsheet it is easy to keep track of which books that I own, but haven’t read yet. My to-read piles had quite a few books that were on the list. Most of these have been picked up the library book sale.
The next step was to see what quick reads I could find as I want to at least get to the 1/3 mark on the list sometime soon. If you look at the pictures you will see that I am now only three books away from that goal.
The list has a little over 50 books on the list that are listed as Children’s. I had already read over 2/3 of them so decided to pick up some of the ones that I haven’t read at the library. Some of the books are a little longer like The Mouse and His Child by Russell Hoban, but others were shorter picture books.
I have also been looking at the list and moving books up my mental list of what I want to read. Some of the books have been on my list for a long time and have just never reached the top. One of these books was Flatland by Edwin A. Abbot. Since I saw it on the list I requested it from the library and read it earlier this month.
I also made a graph in the spreadsheet of the books. The list is sorted alphabetically by author and this tracks consecutive books read vs. gaps in the list. Of course, the red spikes are shorter as I have only read 1/3 of the books.
The large red spike is Shakespeare. A large number of his plays are on the list.
Now to find three short books on the list to read.
Steven
Braman's Wanderings 