Did I buy this book already? Have I already read this?
Do you ever have trouble remembering if you have read something? Titles often sound alike—The Time Traveler’s
Wife, The Ambassador’s Wife, The Wife.
Which wife book was it you read? Authors, agents, or publishers know creating titles like these helps to sell books.
Along the same line, some of us may have trouble remembering which books we have even bought. Amazon has daily deals on eBooks, selling most of them for just a couple of dollars.
It is so easy to look at one and think, “That sounds interesting, and it is only two dollars. I will get it.” But if you do it often or don’t read it soon, will you remember that you bought it?
If you share an account with someone else in your household and you both order eBooks, or even regular hardcopy books, sometimes it is unclear who ordered what. While I can be reasonably confident that books on history were ordered by my husband and cookbooks by me, other titles are less
clear.
I think part of the problem is that with eBooks, we do not see the cover as much when we put them down. If I see a book I am reading lying on the coffee table, I notice more about it— like the title—than with the plain cover of my kindle.
And so, as usual, I started a list. For the last few years, I have made lists of books I have read as I finished them. I even rated them from one to five.
And now I have a new list of bought books.
Every time I buy a new eBook from Amazon, I write it down on my new book list. When I have read it, I put a mark beside it. I also have a little mark for those titles that I sometimes get for free on Amazon. I do it using the notepad on my iPhone because I can search easily for
titles.
Of course, you can always go to your orders on Amazon and look at your digital orders. But again, I don’t always know if I bought something or if my husband did...and it's easier and quicker to navigate on the phone.
Sometimes, when browsing online, I see a book by an author I am unfamiliar with, but that looks interesting. I then go to my list of purchased books to see if I have anything else by that author.
I’ve been doing the new book list for about three months now, and I wish I had started sooner. It saves money. I don’t go looking for a new novel until I check my list to see if there is something already there to read. It also saves me the hassle of having to return a book that I didn't realize I already
had.
Right now, I'm reading Malibu Rising and enjoying it so far. Happy reading.
