Goodreads and Book Snapshots
Forgetting Stories
In the summers between college semesters (about 1970), I discovered that if I read a novel and don’t write anything down about it, in a few months or a year, all specifics of the story will fly out of my mind. Also the things I did remember and did value meld together but I could no longer identify the source.
Book Snapshots
So, I started writing book snapshots, not reviews but notes that trigger in my mind what I found important in novels and non-fiction. When computers came around, I saved them and with the web I saved them on my website. That worked, but it involved programming and support effort which consumed time I wanted to use on other projects.
Goodreads
After a number of offers to join Goodreads, I finally joined a couple of years ago and found that it supported snapshots better than my site. Now I use Goodreads for my new book snapshots.
If daily life seems cramped, I look through old book snapshots, reminding myself of things I was overlooking.
I like to link to my Goodreads book snapshots. This summary shows the book covers of my selections. In the interest of full disclosure, some books didn’t rate complete attention from beginning to end.
