In 1999, I started keeping a list of the books I read on an old computer program called Sidekick, which was amazing because you could create cardfiles and name the categories exactly what you wanted to. As the years went by, they did not update the program.  It became more and more unstable.

So two years ago, I managed to import all outlook michael cunninghammy data into a separate contacts file in MS Outlook. Each book is a separate contact, and hopefully on the fourth line you can see that this card is filed as Cunningham, Michael–author’s last name. There’s also a nice place to make notes, although this one is blank at the moment. Sometimes in the notes area, I will add if I borrowed the book from someone or if I gave it away or why I chose it to read.

The categories don’t match up exactly.

Company=genre (novel, stories)

Job title=title

Business=year it was published

Home=year (or years) I read the book. This is an older entry, where I actually wrote out july. These days, I use 01 for January because it offers nice possibilities for sorting.

Callback=Not seen here because this is an older card, but where it says Business Fax, I now use callback, which = do I want to read this book again. And here I have 3 choices: yes, no, maybe.

I can see in two seconds if I’ve read a book before.

Last summer I added a card for each of  the other books on my shelves that I’d already read.

One of the recent comments: “I keep a tiny journal of all the books I read each year and the page numbers and the dates I read them.”

In a separate Note in Outlook, I also keep track of yearly totals. Do you keep track of the books you read? If so, what do you record and how?

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