Adjective-Noun-0123 t1_j1noyz0 wrote on December 25, 2022 at 10:31 PM

If you devote ten hours of every day of your life to reading, the "books you want to read" list will still keep growing faster than you can get through it. By the time a few months have passed, you'll maybe have different tastes in "want to read" than you did when you made the list. Books that don't make it on your list, but that you bump into in the wild, may be as beneficial or better than those on the list.

Having a couple dozen books staged (on shelves, on an e-book reader, or in a list to get from my next library/purchasing trip) is plenty. The return on investment for a larger list may be negligible. Let the rest just be in your memory and, if you forget them, let them go. They'll either be back or they won't; you'll never run out of books.

boxer_dogs_dance OP t1_j1o7sck wrote on December 26, 2022 at 1:10 AM

I've been thinking about how to respond to this. My goal is not simply to read enjoyable books. My goal is to find and read some of the books that lifelong readers love to read. My ap highschool English classes and my degree in literature gave me a basic education. Finding these reddit forums gives me the opportunity to crowd source the equivalent of graduate school at no cost. My favorite poetry collection the Rattle Bag was created by asking well known poets for their favorite poems. I will never read all the books on my lists, but I am going to make those lists anyway.

Adjective-Noun-0123 t1_j1om16r wrote on December 26, 2022 at 3:21 AM

> I am going to make those lists anyway.

I now think you enjoy making, using, and maintaining the lists. And if you do? Of course keep it up! If I enjoyed it, I'd do that too. : )

I suggest just make a LibreOffice Calc (that's the free version of Excel; if you own Excel, that's fine too) document, rather than any app that could go obsolete or spy on you, and track the books and categories there. Easily backed up (just email it to yourself sometimes), easily modified or re-ordered, and easily filtered.

You could even keep the books you've read in there, mark them read, and add notes on how the book went and what you thought (something I wish I'd done for several; so many books all I remember is one or two things that happened and that I enjoyed it.)