"Have I Read This Book Before?": Discovering the Answer

After I wrote yesterday’s post on not remembering if I had already read Sue Miller’s 1993 novel, “For Love,” the question nagged at me, and I couldn’t resist taking the time to flip back through my “books read” notebook. Sure enough, I found that I had in fact read “For Love” in 1994. I have resigned myself to this kind of forgetting, and rationalize that it is because of the many years I have been reading and the many books I have read. Also reassuring is to hear that my friends have the same experience, so I am not alone in this. While I was looking through my list notebook, I ran across titles of some other books I had forgotten reading, as well as many that I well remembered. I was reminded too of some of my reading habits, such as going on “binges” of certain authors, or countries’ authors, and such as re-reading old favorites many times over the years. I am glad I have kept this list all these years; it helps me remember, and it gives me pleasure to revisit past reading.