Hello and welcome to Episode Forty Seven of Page Turn: the Largo Public Library Podcast. I'm your host, Hannah!
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The English Language Transcript can be found below
But as always we start with Reader's Advisory!
The Reader's Advisory for Episode Forty Seven is Gentlemen & Players by Joanne Harris. If you like the sound of Gentlemen & Players you should also check out: The Drama Teacher by Koren Zailckas, For Your Own Good by Samantha Downing, and The Tenth Girl by Sara Faring.
Bonus segment my personal favorite Goodreads list Gentlemen & Players is on is Chess Themed Fiction
Happy Reading Everyone
Today’s Library Tidbit is about keeping track of your reading and book journaling!
For those of us that read, keeping track of books you’ve read is an important step. There are multiple reasons why someone would keep track of their reading, from simply remembering which books they’ve read, to knowing where in a series they left off, to noting authors they like or don’t like. But how to keep track of this information? How to know how much information to keep track of? Where to even start?
Well, there are no good answers to these questions because it’s very subjective! There are online resources you can use to keep track of your reading, Goodreads and Storygraph, even an excel spreadsheet for those of you who like to program your own. You can also use good old pen and paper. The upside to using an online resource is that you can search quickly to figure out where in a series you are, what the next book is, and also if you have or have not read a title. The downside to online resources is that often they cannot be personalized.
Someone who keeps track of their reading using a journal is more easily able to add their own thoughts and feelings, even draw images or create collages that connect thoughts, opinions, and feelings about a book. It all depends on the reader!
The library can also keep track of your library reading history, but only if you ask us! For privacy reasons the library does not automatically keep track of items that you have had checked out. However, a lot of readers find the convenience of being able to see which library items they’ve checked out to be more important for them than the privacy of not having records available to subpoena or warrant. If you are interested in keeping track of your library item history then talk to a library staff member and they can turn that on for you. It will not be able to know which items you have already returned to the library, but it will keep track of items from that day until you turn it off.
I personally, need to keep track of what titles I’ve read. Like most readers, I read a lot, and I read series. Nothing is worse than when you find out a new book in a series is coming out but you’re not sure where you left off. Reading through book summaries trying to figure out where you stopped, trying to remember if you stopped reading this series for a reason, or even reading the series starting over from book one, all take more time and energy than having a track record of what you’ve already read.
Over the years the library has seen plenty of different ways readers keep track of their reading. Our least favorite, and one we will ask that you do not do, is when readers physically mark books with their own private secret code, so that if they pick it up again, they know if they have or have not read it. We do not like when patrons put marks in our books, but also having a personal mark lets us know just how many books a reader has marked up and we will grab them as evidence when asking you to stop marking in our books.
We have also seen readers come in with notebooks, separated by author, with series written down in order and check marks next to titles already read. This is a great resource for readers who like to read specific authors,
