The longevity of book lists.

While I was packing to move I found a little notebook that I carried around in college to make book lists in. I was in college from 1993-1998, so while we had internet it wasn't nearly as awesome as it is now. I was on several bookish listservs and had a notebook.  I made this short video to show it to you all. Amazing that I could record a video of this quality in ONE TAKE, no? Judging by the titles on the first page, this was from about 1997. Near the end I started dating the pages and January 2002 is the last date I see. There are a lot of formal lists in here: "RWA Books of the Year 2001", "Recommendations to K", "Ship Books", lots of series in order, since you couldn't just whip out your phone at the library to find them.

I had a class (Women's Studies) about that time with a girl who kept the best journal ever, and I've always strived to get myself into the habit of what she did. Basically, it was a 3 ring notebook, with a decorated cover, and she just started on page one and filled it up with everything. To do lists, book lists, journal thoughts, quotes, poetry, recipes, absolutely everything. 15 years later, I'm still trying to copy her. In some small ways I do, I keep a spiral notebook by my computer and make notes about anything in it, including grocery lists, and phone numbers, but it's not pretty or thoughtful and I don't save them. Things like Goodreads and Pinterest took over the pretty parts for me.

While it's doubtful that I would ever read from these lists, I imagine that I won't ever intentionally get rid of this little notebook either.