Do you have a system for the books you hope to read next? & What's currently there?

[_Shannon_]

I think I realised how much of a book addict I was when I realised that no matter what I was reading I was thinking about and planning what I'd likely read next and next after that and next after that ad infinitum...

So my question is do you have a place where you keep the books on your short list? Do you have a system for keeping track of what you'd like to read in the near future? Do you write it down? Do you have no system and just pick books at random?

And I guess, too, what's there now? What books are in the queue?

I have my near term books piled around me on the computer desk, then the next set piled on the shelves around the computer, and the the next set piled on the shelves in my bedroom.

Right now on my computer desk is Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatini, Reading Lolita in Tehran, Silence by Shusaku Endo, Swann's Way by Proust, Dr. Zhivago by Pasernak, Home is Where the Wind Blows: Chapters From a Cosmologist's Life by Fred Hoyle, and a selection of Greek tragedies.

[PeterL]

Oh yes, when I think of something to read next, I read that. I can't think of a better system for such. I decided that it was time to reread Foucault's Pendulum, so that's what I will read next.

[bej6s]

I was an avid reader as a child and upon reaching middle school, I realized that not every book is great or even worth reading and I lost faith in many books and stopped reading for pleasure. Recently, I have picked up the urge to read non-stop again, so I searched online for a list of recommended books to start off with. I ended up finding a 50 year list with a list of books for each year. There are much shorter lists, so I started with a couple of those and that is what I use when I want to read but don't know what to choose next or know little about renowned authors.

[jgweed]

For some of us, a trip to a decent bookstore is an event that must be planned and then savored to its fullest, even if crammed in to busy schedule.
I generally keep a list of three or four books I want to read, in case I find them on the shelves. Far-too-often, I get lost when I turn my head sideways to read the titles on the spines lined up side by side, and end up buying a book not written down, drawn by its table of contents or its index.

[ThousandthIsle]

I was an avid reader as a child and upon reaching middle school, I realized that not every book is great or even worth reading and I lost faith in many books and stopped reading for pleasure. Recently, I have picked up the urge to read non-stop again, so I searched online for a list of recommended books to start off with. I ended up finding a 50 year list with a list of books for each year. There are much shorter lists, so I started with a couple of those and that is what I use when I want to read but don't know what to choose next or know little about renowned authors.

Liz - I often am led to new books through books I read. Authors I read seem to reference other literature from time to time - has led to interesting discoveries for me.

I think your interest will be peaked most easily just by browsing a bookstore or library or even this forum!

[kelby_lake]

I have an idea generally. Normally my eye gets caught by interesting titles- that's how I found The Ballad of the Sad Cafe, which I like despite its strangeness.

[amanda_isabel]

I have a few gifts of books that are just waiting to be read, including Great Expectations... but generally, I'm a sucker for great cover art and good reviews, not to mention, a lot of my frieds are bookworms too, so we swap books. :)

[Pyrrho]

I have a very long list which I do not think that I will ever be able to finish. However, the next book hopefully will be 'Les Miserables' by Hugo. This one has been top of my list for months now but some other book always gets in the way. Actually it is quite difficult to stick to the list because I often discover some new book(that is not on the list) by chance and then I have to read that one right away.

[_Shannon_]

LOL- my husband works at a bookstore- and we met while both working at a bookstore....so unless it's a musty used book store- much of the bookstore ambiance is gone. We also, between us, have probably 90% of anything we'll ever want to read--so my bookstore i mostly just my house...and then I move books around depending on what I'm interested in.

[Erichtho]

I have a book in which I note down titles and authors that might be worth reading, but I am totally unable to follow some list or scheme. I only read for pleasure anyway, so it's no problem that an Italian drama is followed by a Turkish novel and a collection of Uhland's poetry. I like that kind of creative mess...
I think it's both amazing and worrying that some/many? people here follow a kind of canon and choose to read a book due to its appearance on certain lists.

[Drkshadow03]

I'm trying to systematize my reading. I have general themes. This year for example it was my goal to read The Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, and world mythologies, along with the philosophy "canon," which I had hoped to read in some sort of general order: Pre-Socratics, most important Plato dialogues, most important works of Aristotle, important Stoics, Epicureans, etc. until I reached Modern Philosophy.

While reading the Bible I found myself wanting to explore it deeper, explore much further into world mythologies (not just Greek and Babylonian myths, but Irish, Japanese, Chinese, etc.), and I started wanting to look broader from the perspective of Comparative Religion, perhaps after reading the New Testament follow it with the Apocrypha, Hindu texts, etc.

I am abandoning my original plan of covering philosophy for the year.

There is part of me that would like to fill in the gaping holes in my literature background, particularly British and American Literature. I have a Masters degree in Literature, focusing on American texts, and there are major Canonical works that I haven't read and am embarrassed not to have read considering I have a graduate degree in the field. So I might rectify this after I finish reading the Greek Myths by Robert Graves. Or maybe I'll do this next year.

-------------------------------

I try hard to plan and have a system based around a topic or two. I obviously don't plan too rigorously. Though, it might be worth trying that out.

[Tersely]

I try not to make a big list because I think it actually kills the fun and I know I never will follow it anyways. I go back and forth between contemporary lit and the classics...so it all depends on my mood. I try to be a bit random at the bookstore (picking up a book that looks interesting makes me more inclined to read it) but I usually go in with a mental list of authors to look for. Just no paper list. I don't want to feel like I HAVE to read it.

[Sir Bartholomew]

yep i do. i just pile the books that i want to read on my desk. i appropriate them and establish a schedule. as for what to read next, it depends on my mood. now, i'm craving for henry james.

[JBI]

I have somewhat of a list, and the rest I kind of just poke around. If something sounds good I get it, hence why I have 50 books out from the library (the maximum) at once, and only read about 2/3.

[slobone]

I used to be more systematic than I am now. But once I find an author I really like, I want to read more books by them. I usually spread it out over a number of years, to have something to look forward to. Unfortunately by now I'm running out of most of my favorites. Except Trollope who I'll probably never get to the end of.

EDIT: Oh, and what's next on my list? Not so much new books I plan to start as old books I haven't gotten around to finishing. Ghostwritten, Indian Summer, The Bostonians, The Woman in White. And someday I'm going to finish War & Peace and The Brothers Karamazov...

[John Goodman]

I have a massive stack of books and usually go short book -> short book -> long book -> short book, etc.. unless there's one I really want to read more than another.

[Joreads]

I have a large amount of books on my to read pile. I then also get things from the Library in between. I always read my bookclub selection first each month and then try to fit in as many books as possible after that.

[stlukesguild]

I have tried to be somewhat systematical in the past... tearing through the Greeks then Romans then Medieval, etc... but such is a rarity now. My reading habits at present are rather spontaneous. Usually I am led from one book to the next for some reason... perhaps I find myself discussing it here on line... perhaps it related to something I am reading or to my present interests with regard to my own artistic efforts. At most times I have some 50+ books piled up around the library that I am jumping between... or that sit in the "next to be read" pile. Sitting right next to me on my computer table at this very moment I have Neruda's Residence on Earth, two volumes of Pessoa's poetry, Christian Morgenstern's Gallow's Songs, a volume of poetry by Miguel Hernandez, three volumes of poetry by Charles Wright, a volume of Spanish Renaissance poetry, Peter Ackroyd's Chaucer, Donald Kuspit's End of Art, Whitman's Collected Poetry and Prose, Yves Bonnefoy's Curved Planks, and a volume of collected writings by Gerard de Nerval. Obviously I am drawn to poetry more than anything else... and definitely to poetry with a definite Iberian bias right now... but I doubt that there is really too much of a logical order to this all.:confused:

[_Shannon_]

I have a massive stack of books and usually go short book -> short book -> long book -> short book, etc.. unless there's one I really want to read more than another.

lol!! I try to alternate, too--between more and less demanding reads. Or if I am trying to read something long- I will will read a few shorter novels as sort of a warm up.

There is nothing worse to me than losing my reading momentum by choosing wrongly.....

[PrinceMyshkin]

My 'system' is to read the next book by Martin Cruz Smith I can get my hands on and to stack them on the pile behind me on the table holding my printer and they are in the order in which they arrive from the 2nd-hand internet book sites where I have ordered them. Earlier intentions kept getting pushed down lower on the list but currently include:

Yeats: Collected Poems
EM Forster: Abinger Harvest
Seth Kkoyd: Programming the Universe
Willa Cather: Lucy Gayheart
Gabrielle Roy: Children of My Heart
Bruno Schulz: The Street of Crocodiles
Stendhal: The Diaries of Stendhal

[NickAdams]

I'm trying to systematize my reading. I have general themes. This year for example it was my goal to read The Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, and world mythologies, along with the philosophy "canon," which I had hoped to read in some sort of general order: Pre-Socratics, most important Plato dialogues, most important works of Aristotle, important Stoics, Epicureans, etc. until I reached Modern Philosophy.

While reading the Bible I found myself wanting to explore it deeper, explore much further into world mythologies (not just Greek and Babylonian myths, but Irish, Japanese, Chinese, etc.), and I started wanting to look broader from the perspective of Comparative Religion, perhaps after reading the New Testament follow it with the Apocrypha, Hindu texts, etc.

I am abandoning my original plan of covering philosophy for the year.

There is part of me that would like to fill in the gaping holes in my literature background, particularly British and American Literature. I have a Masters degree in Literature, focusing on American texts, and there are major Canonical works that I haven't read and am embarrassed not to have read considering I have a graduate degree in the field. So I might rectify this after I finish reading the Greek Myths by Robert Graves. Or maybe I'll do this next year.

-------------------------------

I try hard to plan and have a system based around a topic or two. I obviously don't plan too rigorously. Though, it might be worth trying that out.

I'm doing the same, but I'm also studying language and anthropology. I'm reading The Aeneid and the Odyssey, because they are forum reads at the moment; after that, I'm going to the beginning with Babylonian text.

I have some books from Graves, Campbell, Eliade and Jung, but I want to read all the text they reference first.

I've included Zhaungzi/Chaung-tse and Lao-Tsu in my studies, but I consider their work philosophy. They are my alternative to Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Water Margin, Journey to the West and Dream of the Red Chamber; however, I do plan on reading them at some point.

Hindu text are very interesting, but it's the Sikh text the I'm truly interested in.

Do you know of any text a non-academic like myself might be missing from his list of things to read?

[papayahed]

I have absolutely no system whatsoever. If something catches my eye I'll read it but generally when I finish one book I'll look at my pile and pick one that seems to suit my taste at that moment.

[kasie]

I long ago realised that even if I lived to a ripe old age and retained my faculties (and eye-sight, though with audio books these days that might not be so important), I would never read even a fraction of the books I ought to/want to read, so now I read whatever takes my fancy. I like to feel I have tried a bit of everything though some literatures have not been much translated into English - for example, there was a thread recently on Norwegian literature and apart from Ibsen and Thor Heyerdel, I couldn't think of a single Norwegian author whose books were readily available to an English reader. And I flit from subject to subject in non-fiction, especially if a friend fires me with enthusiasm for a subject. Also I find Life gets in the way of reading quite frequently. :)

[JBI]

My 'system' is to read the next book by Martin Cruz Smith I can get my hands on and to stack them on the pile behind me on the table holding my printer and they are in the order in which they arrive from the 2nd-hand internet book sites where I have ordered them. Earlier intentions kept getting pushed down lower on the list but currently include:

Yeats: Collected Poems
EM Forster: Abinger Harvest
Seth Kkoyd: Programming the Universe
Willa Cather: Lucy Gayheart
Gabrielle Roy: Children of My Heart
Bruno Schulz: The Street of Crocodiles
Stendhal: The Diaries of Stendhal

Have you read Street of Riches (Rue Deschambault)? Children of My Heart acts as a sequel to that book, and is perhaps more enjoyed if you read Street of Riches First.

[cipherdecoy]

Let's see...
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Che Guevara's Bolivian Diary
Shakespeare's Julius Caesar
Bram Stoker's Dracula

[Mockingbird_z]

well, I have Joyce's "Portrait of an artist as ayoung man" unfinished, also the Dubliners, and the Oscar goes to ..tam..tamm.tamm. Melville - Moby Dick. I dont know if I will ever finish it but I will try again...
actually I sometimes write a list of books i want to read, but I can not read more than one book at a time =(

[johnsccc]

well, I have Joyce's "Portrait of an artist as ayoung man" unfinished, also the Dubliners, and the Oscar goes to ..tam..tamm.tamm. Melville - Moby Dick. I dont know if I will ever finish it but I will try again...
actually I sometimes write a list of books i want to read, but I can not read more than one book at a time =(

Definitely try Moby Dick again. It's daunting at first but it's one of the most rewarding reads in my recent memory. The chapters on whale mesurements do slacken the pace slightly but I think the book as a whole is an unquestionable masterpiece.
----------------------------------------------
when I'm about half way through a book i usually start getting excited about the imminent prospect of reading another book and so that is the basis of my reading system. It's very fluid but it works! Also, trips to secondhand bookstores are a big factor in deciding reading order. Many a time a book I randomly see on a shelf superceeds my mentally planned next book

[plainjane]

System? :rolleyes: That would imply organizational skills I believe. Something I sorely lack. :p

[Nossa]

I don't have a system, I just read whatever comes to my mind. For instance, I have tons of unread books in my bookcase, but just yesterday I bought five books, and I already started reading in two of them. I always have books that I wanna read on mind, but I don't have a system, I just read :D

[Mockingbird_z]

ok thank you =) I sure will.
I hate leaving books unfinished.

[Vincent Black]

I have quite a large list of books I want to get my hands on, it's about three pages long (it includes non-fiction as well). as for what to read next I have books stacked around my desk and my bedside table, I have quite a few books I haven't read yet sitting around, which one I read next depends on my mood.

[Virgil]

I have tried to be somewhat systematical in the past... tearing through the Greeks then Romans then Medieval, etc... but such is a rarity now. My reading habits at present are rather spontaneous. Usually I am led from one book to the next for some reason... perhaps I find myself discussing it here on line... perhaps it related to something I am reading or to my present interests with regard to my own artistic efforts. At most times I have some 50+ books piled up around the library that I am jumping between... or that sit in the "next to be read" pile. Sitting right next to me on my computer table at this very moment I have Neruda's Residence on Earth, two volumes of Pessoa's poetry, Christian Morgenstern's Gallow's Songs, a volume of poetry by Miguel Hernandez, three volumes of poetry by Charles Wright, a volume of Spanish Renaissance poetry, Peter Ackroyd's Chaucer, Donald Kuspit's End of Art, Whitman's Collected Poetry and Prose, Yves Bonnefoy's Curved Planks, and a volume of collected writings by Gerard de Nerval. Obviously I am drawn to poetry more than anything else... and definitely to poetry with a definite Iberian bias right now... but I doubt that there is really too much of a logical order to this all.:confused:

I've thinking about this thread. Like St. Lukes I used to have a plan, or if not an exact plan, certainly a semi systematic approach. Now it just seems whimsical. Especially since being on lit net and participating in the book forums. I too tried to spend time focusing on a period, classical, medevil, renaissance, etc. I had a plan once to get through every one of Shakespeare's plays. I've got 20-something out of the 38 plays done, but I did stop. Now like St Lukes I no longer have a plan.

[Drkshadow03]

I've thinking about this thread. Like St. Lukes I used to have a plan, or if not an exact plan, certainly a semi systematic approach. Now it just seems whimsical. Especially since being on lit net and participating in the book forums. I too tried to spend time focusing on a period, classical, medevil, renaissance, etc. I had a plan once to get through every one of Shakespeare's plays. I've got 20-something out of the 38 plays done, but I did stop. Now like St Lukes I no longer have a plan.


Why didn't your plan work, Virgil?

[Virgil]

Why didn't your plan work, Virgil?

:lol: Good question. i guess there was nothing to enforce my plan. When you're in school you have to follow the curriculum. In personal life your whims take you off plan and then you give up on it. :)

[pussnboots]

It's probably the Mrs. fault

[Orpheus]

In the past I made book lists. However, because I am easily distracted, I have not kept to a single one of them. My strategy for what to read next depends entirely upon where my curiosity is at that moment. Perhaps this isn't a great strategy, however. I currently have about a dozen books and numerous magazines surrounding me right now. hehehehe.

[Ethan Roy]

I can't really say that I systematically choose which books I will read next, but I have a tendancy to read books of the same genre one after the other, and currently that genre is dystopian. Mind you, I have strayed from the genre as was required by school reading and such.

[Idril]

My choices are fairly random, do an author search on amazon, find which ones are available and which ones are cheap :D and go with that. I like to have a stack of books to read on my shelf, when I get down to 2 or 3, I know it's time to do some book shopping. Right now, I have The Tree of Man by Patrick White, The Anti-Soviet Soviet Union by Vladimir Voinovich, Scum by Isaac Bashevis Singer, Skylark Farm by Antonia Arslan and The Audacity of Hope by Barak Obama. That last one is not something I bought myself, it belongs to my Mother, whom I'm pretty sure has a giant sized crush on the man. It sits at the bottom of my pile and I will read it because I like him too but I'm not really excited about it, I'm just not a non-fiction kind of gal.

[Logos]

For my "recreation" reading I just look at the pile of about 50 books I've got on one of my top shelves. Stand about 3 feet away, squint slightly, look at all the pretty bright colours and various fonts, scan slowly, then just grab whichever one 'jumps' out at me :D They're piled into fiction and non-; I've been in more of a non-fiction mood lately.

For my research/work reading, well, they're in fairly well-ordered piles like "read STAT", "in progress", and "read by end of month" :lol:

[Dark Muse]

I have a system that is part random, and part acutally planned out, though it is a bit complicated and a bit OCD, to try and explain in a way which would acutully make sense to anyone else, as well there is the fact that I read several different books at a time.

Though for me, the way I choose the next book I am going to read is based partly off of the book I have just finnished, and partly off of which shelf in my room the book came from.

Also right now, I have a stack of books on my floor in my room and whenever I finnish one of those books, I choose another from that stack, via just drawing names out of a hat, becasue I cannot decide which I want to read next to I write the titiles down on peices of paper and randomly draw which one to read next.

[mtpspur]

I once got clever and started at one end of the bookcase and went left to right top shelf working my way down. This went quite well for several months. Was just about finished when I got a raise or something and discovered some new authors and the shelf filled up again. I have books I suspect will never get finished. There are at least six right now in various stages of started,stalled out or hit a boring passage. Even worse the past year or so I'll read a book and a month have an awful time remembering the plot, Even though certain books read over 40 years ago are very clear in the memory. So really it's a scattershot method. Not practical right now that's for sure.

[thelastmelon]

Right now I've got a pretty long list of books "to read next".
I've borrowed several books from the library, and several others from my family and also from my boyfriend's family. And these books are the books I've planned to read next.

There are books like:
Siddhartha - Herman Hesse
Atonement - Ian McEwan
Invicible Cities - Italo Calvino
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler - Italo Calvino
The Crooked Hinge - John Dickson Carr
The Chronicles of Narnia - C.S. Lewis
Incidents of the shrine - Ben Okri
Stars of the new curfew - Ben Okri
Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance - Barack Obama
Blue Salo - Vladimir Sorokin
Anthills of the Savannah - Chinua Achebe

There are some more African literature on the list as well, but it's pretty long as it is, in my opinion. I have a lot of reading to do. :thumbs_up

[Scheherazade]

After reading books randomly for years, I have decided to follow a list so three years ago, I starting reading through BBC's Big Read.

After that I am planning to read the Pulitzer winners.

Of course, there is also the Forum Book Club. I usually read the monthly book (the BC was the reason that I joined this Forum initially :)).

[Niamh]

i have no system what so ever. I just buy lots of books with intentions of reading most of them.

[Loike]

I generally have an idea of the next book that I want to read as soon as I hit a less appealing section of the book I'm currently reading.

I felt this in particular with Anna Karenina, which I just really wanted to finish so that I could move onto Henry James' Daisy Miller, which was staring at me seductively from my bookshelf. Fortunately I resisted temptation, finished Anna Karenina, and as a punishment for almost giving into a passion, have started to read John Fowles' The Magus before I will allow myself to read James.

I also have a list that my A-level English tutor gave to me before I left of what are in his opinion the best novels from the nineteenth century onwards, which I'm working my way through at the moment.

I really hate that intense feeling of wanting to read another book when I'm in the midst of another. I feel like a bad person. *Sigh*.

xx

[Maria Francesca]

I have gaps in my learning and I am now able to go back after a ten year absence from study to re-visit what I read and discovered so many years ago. I am reading Coetze essays and Harold Bloom and went back to the bible and will make my way back up through Virgil and Dante and Proust and all the modernists. I lost my sight and have got it back and so reading and writing are very precious to me especially now.

[mtpspur]

May I congratulate you on the recovery of your sight and welcome to the forums.

[Loike]

May I congratulate you on the recovery of your sight and welcome to the forums.

Ditto. :) .

xx

[coolestnerdever]

I just read whatever strikes my fancy. I have so many half-finished books.

[bounty]

I think I realised how much of a book addict I was when I realised that no matter what I was reading I was thinking about and planning what I'd likely read next and next after that and next after that ad infinitum...

So my question is do you have a place where you keep the books on your short list? Do you have a system for keeping track of what you'd like to read in the near future? Do you write it down? Do you have no system and just pick books at random?

And I guess, too, what's there now? What books are in the queue?

I have my near term books piled around me on the computer desk, then the next set piled on the shelves around the computer, and the the next set piled on the shelves in my bedroom.

Right now on my computer desk is Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatini, Reading Lolita in Tehran, Silence by Shusaku Endo, Swann's Way by Proust, Dr. Zhivago by Pasernak, Home is Where the Wind Blows: Chapters From a Cosmologist's Life by Fred Hoyle, and a selection of Greek tragedies.


i think i usually have a sense of spontaneity about what i read---i've got bookshelves at home and i'll stand there and look up and down them until something leaps out at me. sometimes i'll get on a kick and say, hmmm, i want to read dickens, or fantasy, or a contemporary best seller/easy read, but often its just looking until something clicks.

[andave_ya]

:D What happens is that I have a general idea of the books I a)want to read b) have to read c) am thinking of reading d) would like to read but it isn't a big deal -- I can wait some 50 or 60 years until I don't have anything else to read. If I find books for categories a or b for a really good deal I get them. Then when I finish whatever book I'm reading I pick another from my shelves. I currently have 40 books that I OWN that I've yet to read. I've forbidden myself from getting any more books :blush:

[ctalerico]

I read a book of fiction and one of non-fiction each week. Other than that, I have a strict random system--the first ones I put my hands on from the ever-enlarging Must-Read piles on tables, dressers, and most flat surfaces in my home.

[raider60]

I go through one specific author's works, finish by reading a bibliography about him or her, then move on to the next one on my mental list--like other posters I usually discover authors referenced in the books I am reading--