Next endeavour

I've kept a log of the books I've read since 1975. It's been a sort of a journal, except no entries about the book itself other than to name the book, the author, the translator and the date I finished it. A couple of years ago I went back and drew arrows next to the books I thought were the ones I admired the most.

As you can see there are no arrows on these two pages. I'm hard to please. I figure from the log and the time before the log, that I read about 1000 books. That's way below what I wanted to read in my lifetime. I gave up on pulp fiction about the time I landed in New Orleans at 21. It was partially because I realized that I couldn't even recall the story or the characters a month after reading one. I had been a fan of John D. MacDonald and Travis Magee (detective) but couldn't remember which ones I had read. If you can't remember a book on some level why read it? Read poets because I thought that they could really teach me how to write. They have. Read famous novelists because I thought they would teach me how to write a great novel. They have taught me how to write also, but not how to write a great novel. Been reading more and more non-fiction the last several years, partially for a biography I plan to write after retirement, but also because I've fallen in love with naturalists and the notion of canoeing and there are thousands of personal narratives about river travel, so I've become a warped collector of the genre. I actually feel as if I'm getting that world history education that I wanted when I started reading the Will Durant history of civilization years ago. (I only got three volumes into it- pre-log record)  So here's the new project for the blog, I'm going back to those that I put arrows next too, and will try to describe why the book felt important, where I was when I was reading it and what it has meant years later. Maybe even post up the page, and you all can see then other books that were crowding that page. It would be cool to have a dialog. Maybe delve into the best songs, the best paintings,,, The best of whatever and whatever it does to your life. I need to re-balance my life a bit here. I need to finish this next draft of the new novel and I need to think about the other things that are important. Whatcha think?