Someone asked in another place what are your five favorite books? I started a list but quickly gave it up. I've read thousands of books in my life; to extract five from that was impossible. But it got me thinking.
I have a list of books. I started it for my kids, a sort of TBR for them, but it grew to be an inventory of all the books I physically owned, then the electronic ones, then also books that I intended to read. So it really is massive.
I went through that file in the wake of the Five Books exercise with this criterion: was this book important to me in some way? It didn't have to be great, it just had to be important to me.
I came up with fifty-nine of them. Most are fiction but some are history books that were important in my career as a historian. I had expected most would be from my youth, in the way that most of my favorite bands date to a span from about age fifteen to twenty-five. To my surprise, a good many date from more recent decades. That made me feel good, for reasons not entirely clear to me.
It was an interesting exercise. Some were important, as I said, because they shaped my precepts and understandings as a historian. Some were important because they introduced me to other types of literature (e.g., The Brothers Karamazov showed me there was more to the world besides SF). Some simply resonated with me and continue to do so. Taken all together, they form a kind of narrative of my life.
I recommend it to any and all. It's easy to start a spreadsheet and just list what is ready to hand. You can add your TBR books to it. One use I've put it to is for gifts. I extract from it the books I have yet to read--not my whole TBR, but the "great books" that I really do intend to read--and share that with my kids. If they want to know what to get me for a birthday or whatever, I tell them to pick a book. I also do this other thing with books as gifts: my kids know they can buy a book for me that *they* have read. A physical book. Inscribe it. Those books sit on their own shelf at my house. It's an eclectic set, but it does provide a kind of view into where my kids' heads were at a given time.
Anyway, like I said, I recommend starting your book list.
I have a list of books. I started it for my kids, a sort of TBR for them, but it grew to be an inventory of all the books I physically owned, then the electronic ones, then also books that I intended to read. So it really is massive.
I went through that file in the wake of the Five Books exercise with this criterion: was this book important to me in some way? It didn't have to be great, it just had to be important to me.
I came up with fifty-nine of them. Most are fiction but some are history books that were important in my career as a historian. I had expected most would be from my youth, in the way that most of my favorite bands date to a span from about age fifteen to twenty-five. To my surprise, a good many date from more recent decades. That made me feel good, for reasons not entirely clear to me.
It was an interesting exercise. Some were important, as I said, because they shaped my precepts and understandings as a historian. Some were important because they introduced me to other types of literature (e.g., The Brothers Karamazov showed me there was more to the world besides SF). Some simply resonated with me and continue to do so. Taken all together, they form a kind of narrative of my life.
I recommend it to any and all. It's easy to start a spreadsheet and just list what is ready to hand. You can add your TBR books to it. One use I've put it to is for gifts. I extract from it the books I have yet to read--not my whole TBR, but the "great books" that I really do intend to read--and share that with my kids. If they want to know what to get me for a birthday or whatever, I tell them to pick a book. I also do this other thing with books as gifts: my kids know they can buy a book for me that *they* have read. A physical book. Inscribe it. Those books sit on their own shelf at my house. It's an eclectic set, but it does provide a kind of view into where my kids' heads were at a given time.
Anyway, like I said, I recommend starting your book list.