JoeB1934 - My Book Reading Journey to Discover Who I Am at 90

In case you are unfamiliar with this acronym it stands for Greatest Of All Time and it is very common in the sports world when ranking players/teams.

In the book world it is very common for readers and websites to produce a list of The Best Books of 2024 Such lists are really only as valuable as the source for the opinion. In my case I often scan the list to see if any books I read in 2024 are on them. If I see that several do exist, I have more faith that others on the list may be of interest to myself.

Please note I am describing a list of Authors and not books. These authors are those who I consider the Greatest Of All Time for ME

I have been a member of LT only since June 2021, but I have well over 50 years of reading experience and have almost 1800 books in my LT library.

On July 13, 2024, on my 90th birthday I decided to create a Life History for my family to know more about what I have done with my life.

One important aspect is my reading. What books did I read, why did some appeal to me more than others and what did I learn about myself with this reading?

Very recently I began to develop a module for my life history which will attempt to reveal answers to such questions.

In looking back at my life, I have repeatedly found a book that sounded interesting to me, which started me looking for other books by that author. I have read books by over 1200 different authors. How in the world will I isolate a limited number that, for me represent the best of them.

I plan to have at least a first cut of such authors by mid Jan 2025 and my reading for the year will concentrate, first on books written by those authors and, second on other authors that show up in 2025 that are candidates to add to the list.

Look forward to following along in 2025, Joe.

Hi Joe. I'm interested.

Happy New Year, Joe!

My objective in pursuing the G.O.A.T. authors for me is not a whim that I decided to pursue for trivial reasons.

Everything I am doing currently ties into the Life History project I started on my 90th birthday last July 13. I have established my objectives for that project to be answering three questions:

• Where Did I Come From?
  
• What Did I Do?
  
• Where Am I Going?
  

As part of the What Did I Do? issue I have spent four months building a presentation about my professional life. It will take me another month to finish that module and during December I started to analyze my book reading.

During 2024 I built a TBR list of about 1000 books that I became intrigued about by reading various other LT members I have starred and various 'Best OF book' lists. All in the hope that I might find a few 5-star books to read.

I could spend countless hours trying to look into those 1000 books just to guess which ones are worth the time to read them.

One way to scan a book's potential is to sort out those that appear in my mental list of great authors I have read in the past. Having read books by about 1300 authors I really need to concentrate on ones I liked in the past. I have a list of about 300 authors that have earned being placed on my favorite authors list over the last few years. Which books are from any of those authors?

It finally dawned on me that the method I used to create my TBR in 2024 is fatally flawed. Counting on other readers to point out books they liked in hopes that I might also like some of them isn't nearly as good as my searching for books from my favorite authors.

Of course, I did read new books from my favorite authors. The website Fantastic Fiction alerted to such books but acquiring new audio books is either expensive or going on a long wait list in Libby.

After that too long explanation of my objectives my intention for this thread is to display my personal G.O.A.T. list after I build it. I won't bore you with the analytics I use to build the list, which will be in my book reading module of the life history.

I am doubtful that my list is actually of any value to a curious LT member. Most everyone has their own list and that is the way it should be.

My list is actually for my family members who want a better idea of who I am and how book reading fits into that question.

I have been working on my book reading module for a few days and I have just decided to structure this thread differently than my original concept.

If any LT member is to be interested in my list of G.O.A.T. authors, they would like to have some understanding about how I arrived at such a list.

A complete understanding will be in the completed book reading module which I will make available in PDF form to anyone who is interested. Meanwhile I have decided to post introductory pages in the module for your consideration.

I apologize for the size of these displays as I plan to investigate how to make them smaller, but retaining the words I need to explain where I am headed.

I also need to let you know I chose the page styles from PowerPoint designer suggestions, which clearly have a bit of AI methods.

            The Cover

            My Objectives

            Tags as Indicators

Love your enthusiasm for your various projects, Joe. Sounds like you have plenty to keep you busy over the next few months.

I haven't posted here in a while, as I have been doing a deep dive into the books I have read in my life. I am still pursuing the issue along several lines. My first, and I believe the most important line is that of identifying a relatively small set of books which spoke to me in a special way.

That special way was to reveal to me insight into myself by stories of people and circumstances that I could deeply relate to. Not that I saw myself as being in the story. More like an empathy with their circumstances, and connectivity with mine.



It is very important to note that I wasn't drawn to these books because of Tag analysis. Instead, they define me via Tags.

My daughter Carey asked me this morning which of these books was my favorite. It was very easy for me to say none, but every one. This reason is accurate because it is the collection that defines very well who I am.

If anyone would like to know me better, it can be obtained by reading these 28 books.

When I get time, I plan to associate each book with the dimensions of the book that I related to specifically. In the terms I described in >10 JoeB1934: it is mostly what I labelled as Themes that sang to me.

I just thought of another book that adds to this display, I might well add another one as I move on with the project, but this does provide a sense of who I am.

A lovely post and concept. (And i want to read His Bloody Project)

>12 JoeB1934: I have only read three of the books you list, but I loved all three (Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, The Round House, and Maisie Dobbs).

>16 labfs39: I am curious if you have read by any of the other authors. My intent is to identify the authors whose stories appealed to me and the books I listed were simply the ones that I discovered first when I came to an author.

>17 JoeB1934: I think the only other authors I've read are Kate Atkinson and Peter Carey, not the books you listed though. I own books by Doig and Byatt, but have not read them.

>18 labfs39: I can't believe that you haven't read Possession, that is my first choice of a book everyone must read. Take a look at Dan's review, which is spectacular.

>12 JoeB1934: That's quite an interesting list, Joe. I've read a few and hope to get to a few more. Best wishes for a wonderful 2025!

>19 JoeB1934: {hangs head in shame...}

In honor of my more literary friends on LT I decided to produce a list of my most favorite literary fiction books.

>22 JoeB1934: I've read more on this list: Anxious People, Gentleman in Moscow, Round House, Notes on an Execution, and other books by Penny, Murakami, and Ishiguro.

This is my most favorite listing in honor of my literary friends. These books are classed as literary fiction while being literary mystery authors.

>22 JoeB1934: I have read the following of these books:
A Trick of the Light (4½) - The Goldfinch(4½) - Lethal White (4½) - A Gentleman in Moscow (4 stars)

>24 JoeB1934: I have read the following of these books:
The Outsider (4½) - The Brothers Karamazov (4 stars) - The Dante Club (4 stars) - Fingersmith (4½) - Rebecca (4 stars) - Shadow of the Wind (4 stars) - Perfume (4 stars)

I have now arrived at the time when I know what displays I want to make of my favorite books.

The complete details of my process will be in the module I am trying to finish. I will make that module available to anyone interested in it in PDF files.

I decided that I should create a new thread which leaves out all my preambles but simply display the covers.

That thread should be finished by tomorrow and it can be found at:

https://www.librarything.com/topic/367671#n8731870

>21 labfs39: would love your response to Byatt. If The Children’s Book covered WW2, I would insist you read it. Alas, it apparently ends during WW1.

>24 JoeB1934: love your lists, and I definitely prefer the second one - the literary mysteries. Laughter in the Dark is a terrific Nabokov novel.

>24 JoeB1934: A great list. I've read 14 of them, starting with The Brothers Karamazov, which I had to struggle through at 17, and I'm quite sure I didn't understand much of it. There are a few more I hope to get to.

>27 dchaikin: And there's another. Thanks, I think, Dan ;-)

>28 Jim53: 😇

In my complete analysis I concluded that the following books encapsulated my special 30 books in >12 JoeB1934: as well as my best true literary mysteries that I designated for my literary friends.

This display contains another 117 books that have slightly less focus on the literary component from the prior display. These books are closer to representation of my traditional literary mystery reading.

I will fully explain the methods I used to arrive at these 200+ authors and their most important books in my finished module.

My library contains about 1700 books by 900 different authors. For each author there is one book, but for my most valuable authors the library contains multiple books.

It will probably surprise you, but I didn't stress out over how much I liked each of the 1700 books. The tags that I like for my reading preferences resulted in locating these 200+ authors.

I pretty much finished my book reading module yesterday but went to bed with some degree of dissatisfaction with the product. I woke up early this morning with a feeling that I had done an acceptable job describing how I find books to read, but not enough about the emotional dimensions.

So, I am creating a supplement to the analytics with much more detail on why I read those 30 books I mentioned in >12 JoeB1934:, which are the foundation of my library.

Do you remember the 30-book display from >12 JoeB1934: ? I have slightly revised that list, but more importantly I now have a name for the list. Those books are :
JoeB1934's Milestone Books

The most accurate description is that those books constitute critical milestones in my reading journey. If each book I read is like a milestone on a trip, these 30-books are those which stick in my memory as ones which opened my eyes to book attributes that I hadn't recognized as being important to me.

Think back to your book reading experiences. Did you ever finish a book, with a wow reaction that resulted in you saying I need to tell someone about this book, or author ?

Of course, you and I have had this reaction numerous times. The difference for me is that these specific books/authors revealed something to me about my true needs in reading, for the first time on my journey.

Hi,Joe, I got around to creating my LT thread and plans pretty late this month and so am awfully late to catching up with others’ threads. I love your concept of identifying the books that were formative for you in your reading life, especially the ones that you really wanted others to read. I think you mentioned possibly making pdf’s of your various lists, of course, I can’t find the post again(!). I hope you’ll find time to do that—I’d sign up for all the lists. Happy reading and reflection in 2025!

I have been busy going over my library and, in the process, identified more books that qualify as Milestone books for me. This list now contains the following 50 books.



I believe that if one were to read these 50 books you would know quite well what I like to read and why. In the full PDF module, I explain exactly why I believe this to be true.

>36 dianelouise100: I assure you that anyone that wants copies of my lists and the methodology I used in developing the lists will be available.

At 3AM Denver time I woke up with an idea how I could make my book reading modules more comprehensive than what I was about to end with. The difference is the partitioning my books into 5 Themes that reflect precisely what I focus on in my reading.

I need to re-iterate that this analysis is all about Who I Am as a Reader and my book lists might or might not be useful to any other member.

Sounds like quite the project, Joe!

>41 AlisonY: It has taken longer than I might have, but I am trying to explain to my family and friends how I approached reading over my lifetime.

I can't produce reviews like others on this this Group and this is more about what books interest me personally. You might not find very many of my favorite books on your lists. I'm not sure there are many readers on LT actually understand, or have an interest in what I am doing.

>42 JoeB1934: Since we seem to value many of the same books, Joe, I feel sure I’ll find others on your list, that I haven’t read, to be enjoyable too. But I’m more interested, really, in seeing why these books appeal to you—I like reading about people’s choices in reading material, I think it helps me to be more intentional in my choices.

I am about finished with my book reading module and I just produced a slide which says an awful lot about me and my process. Here it is:

After weeks of development, and a few days being hampered by a fall that sprained both wrists, I am now ready to share the product of this phase of my life.

It turns out that I actually divided the project into three different modules. All written in PowerPoint presentations format.
This approach allows me a way to offer somewhat interested members the choice to spend the amount of time appropriate to their level of interest in this exercise.

• The main presentation of the methodology and presentation of book covers for the essential books important to me. This exists in What Books Did I Read and Why Did I Like Them
  
• A module titled My Literary Mystery Book Lists by Themes which provides detailed Titles and Authors instead of book covers.
  
• A module titled My Literary Mystery Milestone Books in Detail which provides discussion on each of the 52 books that represent myself.
  

If you are interested in looking at these modules, you can do so by sending me a message with your email address.

I will send an email in return with a link for each of the modules and you can elect to receive any, or all of them at the time you choose.

I have these saved in 3 different formats.

• In PPTX format which you need a free PowerPoint reader to read.
  
• In Google Slides format which is Googles free presentation app.
  
• In PDF format.
  

The PDF format is least desirable because the slides are restricted in size and some displays are not as legible.

I'm so sorry to hear that you had a fall. I hope your wrists aren't too sore and you feel better soon.

>12 JoeB1934: Of the 30 books listed I've read 11 and read other books by 2 of the authors. Kent Haruf is a favorite, I could read his books again, they are so lovely.

I saw your post about Possession by A. B. Byatt...I will move it up to the top of my TBR list. I like that you have a specific book that you believe everyone should read. I'll need to think of one that I would put in that category.

>47 almin: By the time I finished my book reading module for my life history I had broadened to 50 books that I called the Milestones of my reading. It is interesting that the list isn't a set of books that are my longtime favorites. The list is a collective of the books that had the most impact on me, while being of different genres.

In the end that list is an example of the Reading Fingerprint you and I worked on a long time ago.

Finally, your mention of Kent Haruf, who I love immensely, brings to mind another book on the list Go As A River, is in a similar vein and one you should take a look at.