Your Reading List?

David

Jul 30

Over dinner one night several months ago, my wife was telling me about the book that she had read and discussed at her book club that afternoon entitled The Reading List by Sara Nisha Adams.

The book's premise intrigued me: the random discovery of an anonymous reading list tucked inside a library book. As my wife rattled off several of the books on the list, I was surprised and pleased to learn that some of them I had read. She and I then began to list off the great books we had each read that we would include on our list. Some of these we stated were fiction and some were non-fiction, but it was nice to learn that we would include many of the same ones.

My wife is an avid reader devouring books at an incredible pace while I am a slow methodical reader. If you have read any of my annual "best of books" blog posts, you know I typically only read about fifty books a year whereas my wife probably reads that many in about eight weeks. As such over our 40+ years of marriage, with the volume of books she has read, she has recommended numerous great books to me.

As we continued our conversation, I said that since I had been making these book blog posts for ten years now, I could go back and pick the best book I read that year to start my own list. But then I realized some of those years, I knew I had read more than one book that I would consider the best. So, maybe some years it might be two or three.

It was a very enjoyable dinner conversation. Later that night, I awoke from my sleep and started thinking about that book again. Then the idea struck me, what if I were to make such a list and as in the book, place it in a library book? I know pondering this question kept me awake for some time in the middle of that night.

The next morning, I recalled my thoughts about this and so sought out the title of the book. When I went to my normal book source (Amazon, since I mostly read on a Kindle), I was pleased to discover that it was marked down to $1.99. It seemed the universe was telling me I should read this book and so clicked the purchase button.

In the very first chapter, that reading list is revealed prefaced with an interesting but perplexing statement: "Just in case you need it:" At the top of the list was To Kill a Mockingbird (by Harper Lee), a classic I had thoroughly enjoyed followed by seven other well-known titles, though none that I had read. Then the very next chapter started with the book The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, one of my all-time favorite time-travel books. While confused why this book was included since it was not on the list, I was intrigued to find out why and then reading on I was quickly hooked.

Set in a suburb of London, the two main characters in the book are an elderly widower and a teenage girl who just so happens to work at the library where the list is discovered. While neither of them has been a big reader in the past, they each work their way down the list. After they have each read a book, they have discussions about what they learned in the book and as they do, begin to grow closer together. And as they read the books, it is interesting to see how the stories and characters in each book affect each of their lives in different but positive ways.

For me not having read seven of the books on the list, the storyline of how the fictional characters in the books influenced both their lives gave me an almost emotional "CliffsNotes" version that I know will lead me to read some of them in the future.

The climax of the books comes with several surprises that brings this enjoyable story full circle.

After reading the book and having had that conversation with my wife over dinner, I decided that I too would make a list of my favorite books. But I decided to make two lists, one fiction and one non-fiction since some of each have influenced my life. And to be true to the book, I decided to only include eight books on each list. But that proved impossible. Once I already had eight on each list and as I continued going through my books, each time I came across another great one I had read, I would look to see if I was willing to delete one of those already on my list and replace it with the latest one. This to me was very difficult and in the end, I decided to list ten.

For my fiction list I would include:

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
Cutting For Stone by Abraham Verghese
11/22/63 by Stephen King
Time and Again by Jack Finney
The Martian by Andy Weir
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave
On the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford
Time After Time by Lisa Grunwald
The Lost Girls of Paris by Pam Jenoff

For my non-fiction list (and you will note a slight bias towards David McCullough, for whom I could have added several more) I would include:

The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge by David McCullough
The Wright Brothers by David McCullough
The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown
747: Creating the World's First Jumbo Jet by Joe Sutter
The Big Roads by Earl Swift
Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
Shadow Divers: The True Adventure of Two Americans Who Risked Everything to Solve One of the Last Mysteries of World War II by Robert Kurson
Water to the Angels: William Mulholland, His Monumental Aqueduct, and the Rise of Los Angeles by Les Standiford
The Reckoning by David Halberstam
A Night to Remember by Walter Lord

You may have heard the expressions "perform random acts of kindness" or "pay it forward" and it seemed to me this was what it would be like if I actually did this. I pondered this idea for a while and then decided I would do it. I checked our library's online card catalog and discovered that the first book on both my lists were available at my local library.

And, so that the finder might not wonder what the list is for, I decided to title it with my own thought: "If you enjoyed this first book, you might enjoy some of these others as well."

It felt a little like I was doing something that was not allowed since I made sure no-one saw me but after I left my lists, I had no regrets and began to wonder who the person might be to find my lists. And what if finding my list happened to encourage them to do the same? They might create their own list and hide it in some books somewhere expanding this even further.

What about you? Would you be willing to take these steps to create an anonymous reading legacy? Even if you don't think you could do this, you should at least make your list of favorite books as you might find, as I did, that it is a quite challenging task.