BooksWhen I worked at the public library in Christchurch, I always used to chortle when I spotted the 'I-have-read-this' marks scrawled inside the covers of many of the books. Thinking at first that it was some sort of low-level vandalism, I eventually figured out (it was the large print books that really gave it away), that many of the older patrons would develop a small hieroglyphic-style squiggle that alerted them to the fact that they had already read a book, thereby avoiding the nuisance of taking home a novel they'd already spent a good proportion of their precious time reading. 'Ahahaha, old people!" I would laugh to myself.

But then, typical, I started getting old myself, and I did exactly that on holiday earlier this year, when I was about half-way through P.J. O'Rourke's All the Trouble in the World, and I realised I had read it before. Admittedly, I must have read it in the same way I did the second time around, picking chapters at random instead of reading from start-to-finish, as I was pretty sure there were a couple of chapters I hadn't read, and others that I had pretty good recall of as soon as I'd skimmed the first paragraph. But still, the old brain isn't what it was...

So, from now on, I'm going to keep a record of what I've read. I'll do it here, because, with the magic of the interweb, I can hook my booklist into my affiliate scheme over at amazon or real groovy and potentially make a few cents here and there from anyone who bothers to click through and read the same sorts of books that interest me. I might even write a review or two, if I'm feeling particularly enthused. Anyway, so far, this year...

The Twenty-Seventh City : A Novel by Jonathan Franzen

Life of Pi by Yann Martel

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis (to Milo as a bedtime story).

To the Is-Land by Janet Frame

Meg by Maurice Gee

How to be Good by Nick Hornby

Automated Alice by Jeff Noon

...and I'd swear there were a few more, but I seem to have forgotten what they were.

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