I have always been a reader. Once I passed the Little Golden Book stage of children’s books that I bought at Woolworth’s, I became interested in books about horses and kids on dude ranches.
I moved on from there to children’s adventures series. My first favorite was the Bobbsey Twins books like The Bobbsey Twins in the Country or The Bobbsey Twins at School. I read every one I could find. Then, in my local library I found Trixie Belden books like The Secret of the Mansion, in which Trixie wants a horse. Just like me! I was hooked on Trixie!
In junior high and high school, our teachers gave us lists entitled “Recommended Reading.” I like structure and a plan, so a reading list was a boon to me. I began to read the books I had heard of, then moved on to the ones I wasn’t familiar with.
To me, the lists were a challenge. By the time I left high school, I had worked my way through everything listed on the American Reading List —except Moby Dick, which was positively off-putting— and many of books on the British Classics list my senior English teacher had given me.
My high school teachers helped me cross titles off my list by assigning books we all had to read for class, like The Scarlet Letter, The Old Man and the Sea and To Kill a Mockingbird, and British classics Silas Marner and A Tale of Two Cities. I continued reading and marking off my lists all through college, adding books that would show up on one list or another, like Lord of the Flies, The Great Gatsby and 1984.
By the time I graduated from college, I was devoted to book lists. I occasionally read at random a book I had picked up because I liked the cover, but too many times I felt that I had wasted my time on those. But I confess to being an “accomplisher,” one who likes to make a list of things to do, do those things, and have the joy of crossing them off a list.
If a book is on a “best” list, it has become a part of the culture, and if I read it, I am adding to my knowledge of the culture of an age, a country, a people or a movement. I am reading something that I can discuss with other people who have read it, I will recognize references to it in other reading or conversation, and I can “nod intelligently” when I hear the title, because I am familiar with the book. I don’t like wasting my time on things that don’t make any difference to the way I think or what I learn.
If you want to become a list reader, lists abound in our computer age. Just type “Reading List” on the subject line and get ready for an onslaught of titles.
Of course, you can make your own list from books your friends recommend to you. Make sure, however, that you know the kinds of books your friend likes to read. If she’s a reader of bloody psycho murder mysteries and you like romances, beware of her suggestions.
You can also make a list by finding one good book and listing all that author’s other books to read. I did that with authors Anne Tyler, John Updike, John Steinbeck and William Faulkner, among others, reading all of each author’s books that I could find.
You might enjoy a whole book about book lists, The End of Your Life Book Club by Will Schwalbe. In this memoir/autobiography, Schwalbe recounts taking his mother for chemo treatments and discussing what they have been reading to pass the time in the waiting room. They begin to read the same books. I had read some of those too, like The Kite Runner.
But I was inspired to copy the titles of books I hadn’t read that seemed like “me,” and I began to read them.
In this way I found the books Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett, which taught me about cathedral construction in the Middle Ages, A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving and The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch. I also discovered French/ Russian author Irene Nemirovsky and her novel Suite Francaise and was referred back to an author I had read in the 70s, Joan Didion, who wrote The Year of Magical Thinking.
Now, I read one book per month for book club. But I still refer to my yellowed copies of school reading lists for additional reading, and I have come to appreciate the online lists from sites like goodreads.com that show me book covers and give me a summary if I want it.
If you’re an accomplisher anyway, extend that quality to your reading. Flip on your reading lamp and start that list. You’ll feel so good about yourself when you cross off a title!
