In the fall of 2006 I checked out a book by author Tess Gerritsen at the library. It seemed like I knew what was going to happen throughout the book. It was eerily familiar, but I couldn't put my finger on why. The cover was yellow, and I was sure I hadn't read a book with a yellow cover recently. As I approached the ending, I realized I had listened to the book, and the audiobook cover image was different from the book cover.

This prompted me to get a notebook and started writing down each book I read. Notebooks are great, but paper lists have some drawbacks. You can't easily find a book or author by flipping through your list. I had several pages of books recorded when I discovered Goodreads.com in 2010. Goodreads works well for me, but the platform does have some drawbacks. 

When I started using Goodreads, it was not an Amazon product. In its quest for global domination, Amazon.com purchased Goodreads several years ago and made a few changes. Because of this you will find lots of book recommendations and links leading to Amazon. It can also keep track of your Kindle reading, if you like. I recommend you ignore the AI generated book recommendations, as many are nonsense. What makes it nice is that Amazon has most books on their website, so you can easily find the books you have read. 

You can organize your books on shelves. My "Want To Read" shelf is sagging under 405 books I would like to read someday. I also have shelves titled "Funny," "Oh the tears," and "Never again." You can read and write reviews too. Because of its popularity, some of the reviews are written by computers and not people. If you are at the library, or *gasp* a bookstore, you can use the Goodreads app on your phone to make sure you aren't getting a book you've already read.   

Some other sites that people use to keep track of their reading are The StoryGraph and LibraryThing. Both of these sites have many of the same features as Goodreads and other interesting features as well. I use Goodreads because it was the site in existence when I started recording my books online. 

I recently finished reading "The Good Neighbor: The Life and Work of Fred Rogers." As I was adding it to my Goodreads "Read," "2023" and "Nonfiction" shelves, I realized my "Read" shelf has 1995 books. That's a lot of books!

My one regret in life is not starting to keep track of what I read earlier. I have recorded nearly 1500 books in the last 16 years or so. I also added an additional 600 books that I remember reading before 2007, like childhood favorites and books I was assigned in high school, as well as memorable books I read through the years. The reason my numbers aren't adding up right is that I have re-read several books from my "pre-2007" shelf.

I don't mind re-reading a book, in fact, I have re-read a lot of books. At this stage in my life, I want to reread a book I loved. I don't want to accidentally re-read something that was entertaining at the time, but wasn't noteworthy enough to re-read for enjoyment. How do you keep track of your reading? What is your favorite book to re-read?