A LIFETIME BIBLIOGRAPHY has its origins in my junior year of high school. In the fall semester I enrolled in two English classes: American Literature (required) and Creative Writing. I looked forward to the second as it was the first creative writing class I had taken thus far. As for theAmerican Literature, I had no expectations. It was, after all, required. I had no way of knowing that the combination of these two classes would put me on a path, setting off a lifelong obsession.
First period was American Literature. (I remember this because of an event I reserve for another time.) Mr. Rosemond was the teacher. That first day, he passed out the syllabus, with a list of the books we would be reading for the semester. There, I found Nathaniel Hawthorn, Mark Twain, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway and F. Scot Fitzgerald. (There may have been more, but at this distance, I don't remember them all. These were the authors we would be discussing over the next twenty weeks.
Next, Mr. Rosemond brought up the subject of the term paper. We could, he informed us, choose to explore a literary theme, a specific book, or the collected works of an author. He gave us a couple days to decide which track we would follow. Of course, we would have to run it by him first, but then we were on our own.
Meanwhile, in Creative Writing, that first day, Mrs. Sternlicht went through much the same first day ritual. She told us about the schedule--how frequently the stories would be due, the assorted in-class assignments, and her grading policy.
"I want to strongly suggest," she said at some point, "that you start keeping a record of the books that you read. Reading different authors, getting exposure to different styles, different voices, is how you'll improve your own writing. Furthermore," she added, "when you get to college, you'll be able to show your professors what you've already read."
The first generation of what became LIFETIME BIBLIOGRAPHY was maintained in braille on 8-1/2x11 paper and kept in a notebook. I had already found a love of reading before the eleventh grade, so there were titles I could already enter into this logue. Most were children's books, but not all. I read, for the first time when I was twelve, Leo Tolstoy's ANNA KARENINA.
Back in American Literature, I-proposed John Steinbeck's major works as my term project, and Mr. Rosemond agreed.
Over the next twenty weeks, reading and writing, I fell in love with John Steinbeck's books. THE GRAPES OF WRATH, EAST OF EDEN, OF MICE AND MEN, IN DUBIOUS BATTLE, TORTILLA FLAT, CUP OF GOLD--I read them hungrily, along with the assigned readings already mentioned. One by one, the bibliography grew. By semester's end, the notebook where I kept the list of reading accomplishments was filling out quite nicely. (Only later did I receive, and devour, WINTER OF OUR DISCONTENT and THE RED PONY)
Spring meant switching from reading literature to Expository Composition. Here, too, there were authors and titles to add to the notebook: these, however, were mostly nonfiction: essay collections, books on grammar and other writing tools and guidelines.
And then came summer--a time when I was free to read whatever I wanted without any input from teachers.
As mentioned before, the original bibliography was written down in braille. I am legally (but not totally) blind. I was born with hydrocephalus. This led to the loss of all vision in my right eye and minimal vision in my left. I began reading braille when I was four. When I entered kindergarten, teachers decided to teach me braille rather than print, presuming that my residual vision was too weak to allow me to read large print. Just two years before the bibliography originated, I had begun to teach myself how to read print, and could slowly read typed letters. That same year, a special education teacher had been surprised to learn that I couldn't even sign my name, and had set out on a mission to fix that. She had my name engraved in pressed wood so that I could learn to trace the letters of my name. To this day, my signature is hardly legible.
The years passed, and the bibliography kept growing. Initially, in college, I was a business administration major, but I didn't want to add textbooks to the logue I was keeping, so most of the entries from that part of my life were fiction, read after homework was done, on breaks, over summer vacations.
In the summer of 1982 I started a separate logue with the intent of seeing just how many books I read over the break. The answer to that was twenty. On that list were several titles by Danielle Steel and Robert Ludlum, but also included were a couple works of Shakespeare, as well as other plays.
When I told the person I was dating at the time, the response was: "You could have spent more time with me."
I just laughed.
Up to this point, all entries were written in braille. Between 1977 and 1984 I alternated between notebooks and index cards. Notebooks were more portable. Index cards were more flexible. With each new author and/or title, I would have to find the corresponding page, rewrite it, inserting the newest achievement in its proper place. On the other hand, index cards were much easier to change, were smaller, and sometimes got misplaced, or damaged.
After seventeen years of continuous schooling, I convinced the Department of Rehabilitation, as well as my parents, to permit me a one-semester sabbatical from college. for the next nine months I read, and read, and red. Seventy-six books (averaging two books per week) I returned to class, changed my major from business administration to English, and got on with my pursuit of a degree.
1985 was the year I took the technological leap. I bought an Apple IIe and painstakingly created the first of what turned out to be many bibliography files. While I could now more easily update author and title entries, I ran into repeated occasions where the file was accidentally deleted, or the computer would crash, leaving me to start almost from scratch. (I still had the boxes of index cards from which to resurrect the bibliography. This was the cycle I would repeat over and over from 1985 until 1994.
In 1986, in another creative writing class (my first at college level) the professor passed out to us students a list of recommended reading. It wasn't, he explained, something he expected us to complete by the end of the semester. Instead, it was something we should work on for the rest of our lives. Three pages in length, it was a list of authors, with some specific titles, that we might read.
Some of the authors and titles were already familiar to me, but most of them were unknown. I set out to read as many of them as I could.
Let me stop here for a minute to explain some rules I have imposed, and some personal foibles. First, a foible: if an author fails to grab hold of my attention within the first thirty pages or so (side one of an audiocassette, say) then I hit the STOP button and send the book back to the lending library. Life is too short to read something that bores me.
The first rule I imposed on myself around this time (1986) was that I would not include textbooks in my bibliography. By this time, nine years into the life of the project, textbooks would have comprised a sizable portion of the space. Only after I graduated, and realized that some of those textbooks were actually enjoyable and would have otherwise been included, did I bend the rule
The second rule I imposed was to add only entries where I had read the entire book. Unless I had enjoyed the entire book, I didn't write it down. This, too, got amended due to my love of poetry and short stories. I may not enjoy every story or poem in a given collection, but I read the book otherwise in its entirety.
So far, my reading had taken place through the media of braille, cassettes, even the original version of talking books on vinyl records. In college though, I got a job working in the university library. During quiet periods, before and after my shifts, I browsed the stacks. My vision is such that small books are easier to read to completion. This led me to explore drama and poetry predominantly. With a new book in hand, plucked from the PR or PS shelves, I would make my way back to the Fine Arts Desk and resume my post as student librarian. If the book caught my attention, at shift's end I would make my way downstairs to the circulation desk and check it out. If not, it went back on the shelf where it belonged.
This random reading opened my eyes to writers I had never heard of, whose books weren't always available from the National Library Service. Karen Lindsey, Robert Sherwood, Francesco Petraca are a few of the names I remember from this two year interval with whom I became familiar.
Along with the RECOMMENDED READING assigned by Professor Jim Krusoe, I started reading from the Washington Post Book World. Not only did I write down the authors and titles of the books reviewed there, I also read books by the reviewers as well. This turned a three-page list into something that grew explosively, opening my eyes to even more writers, styles, subject, and voices.
As an English major, I was simultaneously taking classes in American and British literature. I remember taking British literature in reverse chronological order: first modern literature, then nineteenth-century, then eighteenth, and so on. Not only did this add to my bibliography, but it also helped me to see the impact of different traditions more clearly, changes in culture, evolution of themes and styles
On January 17, 1994, my faithful Apple IIe died a quick but painful death when the Northridge earthquake threw it from my desk to the floor with a Richter scale 6.8 shove. For nine years the computer had been where I wrote my stories and maintained my reading histories. Again, with the help of old fashioned index cards, I would have to reconstruct a computer record. This time, it would be via a PC.
And so the cycle continues. Nowadays I sometimes enter new authors and titles before I've completed a book, so excited am I to put down evidence of a new literary find.
As I write this, the bibliography or logue is approaching thirty-three years of existence, and is, in some way, an autobiography. Perhaps I could have chosen to maintain this reading record in chronological, rather than alphabetical, order. Then I would see the intellectual progression, mental and emotional development. (One would notice when my daughter was born by the avalanche of children's books to be entered into the logue. and the inclusion of psychology-related titles would announce my abortive attempt to pursue a naster's degree in psychology, a pursuit of an MFT license. Later, it would show the addition of books on legal themes as I pursued, successfully, my paralegal certificate.) But that would most likely have led to something so unwieldy that I'd have given up on it years ago.. Better, perhaps, that I followed this instinct. Even alphabetically organized, it fills more pages than years of existence. I manage to add roughly one page of authors and titles for each year of life. That adds up to anywhere between thirty and sixty books per year..
Books have accompanied me on many a bus or train ride or airplane flight. They have helped me pass time in countless waiting rooms over the last three decades..
I wonder if Mrs. Sternlicht's suggestion lit a fire in other students.
Did they start a record of their reading?
Did they maintain it, or give up after college?
Am I the only one for whom it became an addiction, an automatic reaction to finding good books to read?
As it grows to its current length of thirty-eight pages, the bibliography demonstrates that I continue to be curious about many different things: psychology, law, history, drama, cultures worldwide.
As long as I breathe, I will read.
Copyright (c) 2013 by the author
