Doing the Shelfari thing has been both fun and frustrating. I always prided myself on my memory, but it amazes me to discover just how porous it really is. Titles keep occurring to me at odd moments now that I’ve got my hard drive working on all this recall. Plus the annoyance of remembering titles but being unable to recall having actually read the book.
For instance, there is a host of books which were required reading in high school that I may well have gotten out of reading because I had read so much other material that the extra credit book reports forgave my lapses re the syllabus. A Separate Peace for instance. I know there was a session on it my sophomore year, but I don’t think I actually read it. There are others. And many of them I do not own anymore, so I can’t browse them (at least at the moment) to see if that triggers the memory.
Then there are novels I know very well I read but don’t have a single line from them. Most of these are in the “classics” category. For example, I know I read Madame Bovary but…and I have that one and as I go through it, my mind is a blank. Willa Cather is the same way.
On the one hand, this is kind of thrilling, because it means I can reread those novels as if they were brand new to my experience. On the other hand, do I really want to? I have read Henry James, I know I have. Turn of the Screw to be sure, but only the wispiest traces remain in memory. I was left with such a foul taste from him, though, that I doubt I would want to revisit him. There are others in that category. Gogol. Dostoevsky. Solzhenitzin. The Russians are less because I found them impenetrable than simply bleak and depressing.
On still another hand, I’ve been recalling books I had totally forgotten about until I put my mind to remembering them. The Mary Stewart Merlin trilogy, for one thing, which I remember now with great fondness, but which hadn’t crossed my mind in 25 years.
The shelf is now over 1600. I’ll probably ardently pursue titles until I hit 2000, then lay off for a time. Even that would leave a great deal unremarked. I don’t find that too shabby at all.
But perusing the lists, it is so clear where my preference lay. It is predominantly science fiction. No surprise, really. But there are some classics of SF that I haven’t read, either. A Canticle For Liebowitz, Alas, Babylon, The Left Hand of Darkness…these books are now or once were on my physical book shelf, but I simply never got around to reading them.
So much to look forward to. I can’t afford to die till I’m a hundred at this rate.