What's The Name of That Book??? Making TBR Lists
GUEST POST BY KATHY CROWLEY
Hi, my name is Kathy and I am organizationally challenged. Also, I am powerless over just about everything, mostly because I can't find any of it. Yes, yes. It's true. I could regale you with tales of repossessed cable boxes (pay the bill everymonth? Come on…) and cars driven with long expired registrations ("Now Miss Crowley," says the officer, "which month comes first, February or August?")
But instead, I'll just cut to the chase: I can't keep track of books I want to read. Or books I've read.
Let's take a quick look at my current system.
Books I'm Dying to Read List:
Somebody recommends a book that sounds great. Exactly the kind of thing I'd like to read. I WRITE IT DOWN. Yes! On REAL PAPER. Sometimes even with the author's name!! And the ISBN! (Well, maybe not.) THEN I put the paper in my pants pocket. THEN I drop tomato sauce laden tortellini on my pants at dinner. THEN I put my pants in the wash. THEN my husband complains that there are little bits of white schmutz all over the clean laundry. And THEN, the next time I'm looking for a book to read I think, what was that really great book…? I know I wrote it down somewhere…
Books I've Read That Mattered to Me:
"Oh yes! That reminds me of this book I read once. I loved it! It was called… Well, it was about this woman. I think she was a nurse. No, a governess! You should read it. I think you'd like it."
So there. You have a sense of the scope of the problem.
Fortunately, I found a support group to help me with this problem. It's called Twitter (yay Twitter!), and it's full of really nice, caring people, most of whom I've never met but to whom I feel comfortable confessing my deepest darkest secrets. Like my book list problem.
Laugh if you want. But let me tell you, Twitter gave me a lot of answers. So did Facebook. And my BTM co-conspirators had a few suggestions, too (most of them polite). So, in the interest of helping my fellow Book List Entropy sufferers, I have collected all of these suggestions, and listed them below.
Book List Preservation Method #1: "I'll have an Old Fashioned, please."
That's right: Pen and paper. Moleskine. Lines. You remember them, right?
[image error] Kathy Crowley's short stories have appeared in Ontario Review, Fish Stories, The Literary Review, New Millenium Writings and The Marlboro Review. Her stories have been short-listed for Best American Short Stories, nominated for a Pushcart Prize and anthologized. In 2006 she was awarded a Massachusetts Cultural Council Grant. She recently finished her first novel. When she's not busy preparing for her future literary fame and fortune, she provides care and feeding to her three children and works as a physician at Boston Medical Center. Kathy can be found on Twitter at @Kathy_Crowley.
