Book Lover's Diary

I was given a journal called A Book Lover's Diary back in 2000 for my 35th birthday (I'll save you the trouble of doing the math - that makes me 50) by Luddite Granny and Grandpa with Jesus.  It's a lovely little book in which I have recorded most of the books I have read in the last 15 years. 

There are different sections:

For books you have read - space for the author's name and publisher and when it was published.

For books you want to read

 

If you lend or borrow books



 

This is the section for book club discussions.  I'd rather stick a fork in my eye than go to a book club so this section remained empty for many years.

I'm not that poncy about my books so this part also remained empty for years. 

At first, because I wanted to treasure this book and not use it up, I was just recording certain books - best sellers, literature (cue posh accent), travel books, books given as gifts.  Kinda like you use your best china, once in awhile for important occasions.  But I started to realise that by not using it up, I wasn't using it at all, so it was going to waste. So I started listing all the other books I read;  the books that filled most of my reading time, the ones that gave me daily pleasure.  I started to fill in the sections I knew I wouldn't use, like the book club section and the book passages section.   

But now it's almost full.

I needed to find a replacement.

I'd been giving it a fair bit of thought;  I don't need all those different sections.  I'd like to be able to add more pages.  And somehow make it more orderly - with my current one the authors are written down in the order they were read but this is cumbersome because I'm constantly flipping through the pages trying to find that author's list when I read the next one in the series and sometimes I get fed up looking for the author, so I make a new list and it gets all muddled up. So I maybe if I could alphabetize it that would useful.

I didn't spend any time looking for one; I knew what I wanted wouldn't exist and I would have to make one.  So I took myself to Staples.

There I found, as I knew I would, exactly what I needed.

 

It's a pretty blue, big enough to be useful but small enough to fit on the table beside my bed.

It lies flat when you open it up.  There's a line at the top for the author's name.  I think one author per page.

It's got a little loop for a pen or pencil.  Helpful because I can never find a pencil when I need it.  I also bought a package of stickies so I can find  each letter section instead of flipping back and forth.  They're a bit long but I'll cut them in half. 

 

I even bought a refill pack of sheets.  The edges are coated in plastic so they should be sturdy enough not to tear.

 

Now I just have to transfer 15 years of reading into my new book.