543!

Back in 1997 at The Children's Book Shop, my co-workers and I discovered that the owner of the bookshop had kept track of the title and author of every single book she had ever read (well, not counting picture books) since around age 9 or 10. We all loved this idea and immediately went out and bought journals to start our own 'reading logs.' Well, after 10 years, I'm happy to report that I've read 543 books in the ten years of 1997-2006! (Of course, I know many of you laugh at this tiny little number.) And I can tell you what each one was, too, month by month and year to year.

I made my own little set of 'rules' as to what I'd let be recorded: I wouldn't record anything less than 64 pages; the book must be absolutely finished before entering (this has led to lots of last-week-of-the-month reading, just to get another title logged in a particular month); I also used coded letters to indicate a book that I've reread (R), or to denote a book that I've read aloud to my daughter (marked with an S). So I have a complete record of every chapter book my daughter and I have read together, which is kind of cool now that she's 16. It's pretty addicting once you get started... and it also helps you finish a book that gets sluggish in the middle -- if it doesn't get finished, it doesn't get entered in the book!