My first, second and (new) third little red book of books read…
It’s a small thing, but I feel I need to note a milestone in my life. T S Eliot’s J Alfred Prufrock measured out his life with coffee spoons. In my case I have measured out my life in books.
Recently I came to the end of my second little red notebook listing “books I have read”. I was surprised to find I could still buy a new notebook just the same, although now it has a barcode on the back.
The back of books one and two was blank, but now there’s a barcode…
Some people love lists, some hate them. My list-loving has lapsed in most cases, but I do keep up to date with this record of all the books I have read. I started the first book when I was a young teenager at grammar school, although that first red book is partly a copy of an earlier list of books read. My first book was a greeny-brown and I abandoned it when I started scribbling other things in the back.
My first attempt at a book of books, which I soon copied over into a red one…
My writing was very different in those school days…
The first pages of my first book of books…
This list was not chronological when it started but a round-up of everything I could remember reading at that stage. Most of the first page is science fiction and the second entry is still one of my all-time favourites, Captive Universe by Harry Harrison. It combines two of my favourite subjects – space travel and the Aztecs.
When I first started listing books, I clearly thought it was relevant what the genre was and whether I owned the books or not – probably because I read a lot of library books, many of them plain yellow-bound Gollancz science fiction, volumes of world mythology and all sorts of art books. Some people say you are what you eat. I believe you are what you read.
I was poor and working class and lived in a village. My older brothers hadn’t been interested in books so when I was born the only books in the house were the 10 volumes of Arthur Mee’s Children’s Encyclopedia.
A set of Arthur Mee’s Children’s Encyclopedia a bit like the one we had…
It was a set bound in blue and dated from somewhere between 1922 and 1946, bought from a travelling salesman. Until I came along the pages had hardly been turned. By the time I said goodbye to them the spine was hanging off volume 10 – which contained the well-thumbed index.
The encyclopedia was on a top shelf in an alcove and I had to climb on to the back of an armchair to reach them – even when I was a grown-up! But these wonderful pre-WWII treasure-troves of knowledge were not the sort of thing you read cover to cover and to be listed in my notebooks a book had to be read in its entirety.
The first novels I read were given to me by a richer friend of the family. They were all boarding schools, ballet and ponies. I remember Damaris Dances by Elsie J Oxenham and the Secret Seven by Enid Blyton. It was a start to my reading but too early to enter my little red books.
Some books from my junior school days did make it to the list because I have re-read them several times since. Here are my three best childhood reads:
Three best books of my junior school days – Space Agent and the Ancient Peril, Knight’s Fee and A Wrinkle in Time…
# Space Agent and the Ancient Peril by Angus MacVicar – a time and space travel adventure, featuring ancient Tiahuanaco (which they now spell Tiwanaku) in South America and the possibility that the Moon will crash into the earth…
# Knight’s Fee by Rosemary Sutcliff – about the friendship of two boys, one Norman, one Saxon – I particularly loved the illustrations by Charles Keeping and copied them in pen and ink…
# A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle – I remember it most for introducing me to a new word, tesseract – a four-space hypercube. I made one out of pipe-cleaners!
These were among the treasures in the mobile library crates we had at junior school. Loosely-built wooden boxes held together with leather straps. I always wanted to be the first to get to the box but of course the teachers chose a different row of desks to go first each time.
But I am digressing more than a bit. Back to the books of books…
You can see how my handwriting had changed by these pages from the middle of my first red book of books – and there’s more variety of reading here, including classics and non-fiction.
The books I was reading in the 1970s…
In my notebooks I underscore the names of the best books – occasionally double underscoring and twice triple underscoring – that was for George Eliot’s Adam Bede and for Philip Pullman’s The Amber Spyglass.
When we move on to the second book of books, we are back to science fiction and at last we have definite dates for the reading…
The cover page and first page of my second book of books, dating to 1985…
And that book has lasted for nearly 28 years. It has started filling up more rapidly in the last nine months, since I bought my Amazon Kindle Touch. From reading one novel every two or three months I have gone to reading one every week or so.
The Kindle has (slightly) changed my reading, too. Although you can never have too many books, in a small house you soon run out of space. It is such a relief to be able to read a book without having to go out and buy it, store it and then take it to the Oxfam shop when you are done with it. This particularly applies to books I know I wouldn’t want to keep for ever, such as most modern novels and a lot of “young adult” fiction and fantasies.
The last pages of my second book of books – all read on Kindle…
Although I fear for the future of physical books – and civilisation itself – be reassured that I do still buy illustrated books and those I will want to read again and again.
The first novel in my second little red book was a science fiction post-apocalyptic classic – Greybeard by Brian Aldiss – and the last was The Grey King by Susan Cooper, part of the Dark is Rising series for young adults.
The beginning of my new book of books…
I have now started the new little red book. I reckon it will hold around 560 books. I may not live long enough to fill it – what a distressing thought. I’d better get reading!
What are the books of your life, I wonder?
And if you are more interested in the notebooks than their content, you may like the Stationery Love section of Jera’s Jamboree by book blogger Shaz…
The Squirrelbasket 
When I first glanced at this in my inbox, I didn’t pay proper attention to the Memo Book cover so was expecting you to talk about the mathematical facts you used to get on the back of exercise books – but these are the smaller kind. A fascinating post, Pat, on lots of levels. I’d go so far as to say brilliant.
Oo-er, thank you! That comment deserves a triple underscore!
As for the tables on the back of exercise books – that’s a whole other blog post, isn’t it? I’m sure we were better at sums when measurements weren’t all multiples of 10. As in 16 ounces make a pound, 14 pounds make a stone… I still remember all these things, even rods, poles and perches. No use at all now, except in a quiz…
Best wishes 🙂
Oh how I wish I had kept a list of every book I had read over the years. It is a bit like keeping a diary every year I start then I forget and it wanes. I joined an online book club so I could keep a note of everything but I even forget to update that. Fascinating to see how your tastes have changed and how diligent you have been in keeping the notebooks going. Great post Pat. p.s. I do keep a notebook by the computer at all times and it holds all sorts of interesting bits and bobs that I have spotted whilst surfing the web. Do you do this too.
Oh wow, Pat. How brilliant! I love that you have done this. You are what you read? hahaha what does that say about me? (rhetorical, you don’t have to answer).
Thank you for the shout out too.
Shaz
I won’t say what I think you are, then, apart from a lovely human being 🙂
And our tastes do overlap sometimes – I’m glad you recommended A Shirt Full of Frogs and Monument 14!
You should get commission from Amazon.
Have a good day…
My daughter bought a book for my husband to keep track about a year ago… Michelle
Lovely – it’s great to look back on what you have read. And also to be sure of the title and author if you want to recommend it to someone.
Best wishes 🙂
What a great record of your life too – I find that recalling books I’ve read transports me back to the times I was reading them too, in a similar way to music. Wish I’d thought to keep a list, might have a go at doing a retrospective one, see how I’ve ‘evolved’! I read on a Kindle now too, I think you’d be as fascinated as I am by one of the latest – ‘Weeds’ -The story of outcast plants, by Richard Mabey (of Flora Britannica fame). It’s so well written and accessible and a treasure trove of interesting stuff for future blogs about plants!
Must look up the Richard Mabey book – as you know, I do love “weeds”.
I tend to read just novels on my Kindle, and am currently on Falco 1: The Silver Pigs by Lindsey Davis, about an ancient Roman detective. I would never dream of buying it on paper, but got it for my Kindle after hearing the author on Radio 4 a few weekends ago. Thoroughly enjoying it.
All the best 🙂
The modern classification of young-adult fiction originated during the 1950s and 1960s, especially after the publication of S.E. Hinton ‘s The Outsiders. It focused on a group of teens not yet represented in works of fiction. Instead of having the nostalgic tone, which was typical in young adult books written by adults, it displayed a truer, darker side of adolescent life because it was written by a young adult.