50 Book Challenge

I love the idea of the 50 book challenge (link via bookslut).  Though I'm not sure yet whether I'll formally participate, one of my new year's resolutions is sure to involve reading. 

I have no idea how many books I read in a year.  Not as many as before children, certainly, but still more than I can easily remember.  At one point, I kept a spiral notebook of all the books I'd read/planned to read soon.  Then I resolved to record all my reading with Papyrus, a now defunct citation management program (it had the best user manual I have ever read before or since).  The beauty of Papyrus was that I could track much more info, esp info about articles and scholarly books, but the project just became too much for me.

Now I can barely  manage to keep track of the books I want to read someday--forget about the books I've actually read.  I have a list on my pda, an email folder in which I save mail that mentions books I want to read someday, and a Bloglines clip folder that tracks book mentions.  Not to mention the little notes in my car where I jot down titles gleaned from the radio.  Book titles pile up far faster than I will ever be able to read the books. 

One tool that has truly helped: Jon Udell's Library Lookup Bookmarklet.  Using the bookmarklet, whenever you view a page at Amazon or BN.com, you can with one click discover whether your local public library owns the book.  And since my local public library allows me to request books via the Internet for free home delivery, I can order books more easily than noting the titles for later. 

Any time bloggers mention a book, they usually link to its Amazon page.  So I read about a book, open the Amazon page in a separate tab (Firefox, natch), read the description.  If I like what I see, I click the library lookup bookmarklet, click to request the title, and the next available copy shows up on my doorstep.  Of course, I can't always manage to find time to READ the books, but still, the bookmarklet is probably the best tech tool I've ever downloaded.  (I told my library about the bookmarklet--they wrote back to thank me and tell me they were going to add it to their homepage!  I am so proud.) Can't wait until my university library buys new catalog software (rumor has it this will happen soon).  Then I can make a bookmarklet for them, too.

I hope that through this blog I can begin once again to keep track of books I've read.  It really bugs me when I want to refer to something I've read somewhere, only to realize I cannot remember title or author.  The public library now provides a "reading history" feature with its only catalog, but I can't make my own notes in that reading history, and it won't track ILL books or books I check out from other libraries).

If only the 50 Book Challenge were about checking out books from the library!  I am sure I have at least 50 books checked out from various libraries right now.

Comments

[Mel]

I also love the lookup bookmarklet. But our library doesn't deliver books...wow.
For the past few months I've been keeping track of the books I read for "fun/personal" reasons (i.e., not academic work) using allconsuming.net -- it's a little bit clunky, but it lets you keep track, and add comments if you like. Plus if you want you can display your "currently reading" category on your blog.

[N.]

Beth! What a cool link - my library's not listed though. They are still in the 1980s, I think. Anyway, that's not why I'm commenting. It's 6 degrees of separation! I know Jon Udell's wife! :)

[Beth]

Mel, I'll have to check out allconsuming.net--thanks!

N., the website didn't list my library either, but it was super-easy to make my own bookmarklet using the directions Jon Udell provides. Or, since you know JU's wife (cool!) maybe she can get him to make one for you. :)