The story so far

On February 25th I wrote my first post to this blog. I’ve been keeping a booklog since 1989 and it seemed to me a weblog would be a good way to make use of it. I cautioned that what I’d written in my booklog was not reviews but writing as an aid to memory. In starting the booklog originally I didn’t want to announce Recommendations or critically evaluate, or anyway I didn’t want to make that a requirement for the writing. I did think about training myself to review books, as one can make money reviewing (one can’t make money with poems). But I thought I’d see if I could get myself into the habit of talking about each book I read as I went along and if I developed a critical stance that was something I might be able to take advantage of in other contexts. If not, as I said, the booklog at least would offer a prophylactic against amnesia.

My notes on books these days do tend toward the critical, the evaluative, but I still don’t try to hold them to the standards an audience would expect. I talk about the books in the context of my life and what a book means to me. It’s still private writing.

Thinking on that I decided to return to my earliest private writing, my first attempt at a daily journal, the one I wrote at for a couple months in sixth grade. Did I write about books in that? Indeed I did.

Visiting the sixth grade Glenn was surprisingly painless, especially since I wasn’t reading for his story but exploring a reference. What did Glenn read next? We don’t have written evidence from a convenient source until the diary starts up again in high school. (And if you read that post you’ll have to visit its sequel.) I’m still working my way through that high school journal. In one month of blog I’ve covered about five months of journal. At this pace it’ll be how long until I get to the 1989 booklog?

Some of these blog postings are rather bare. Still private writing? Probably. But I’m going to let that be okay. This blog may be publicly accessible and I’m happy to have anyone come by and read it but like many blogs it’s a hybrid, public and private. I’m exploring my life in books. Come along if that amuses you.