When I was reading Stephen King’s On Writing, he told would-be writers to read as much as they could, whenever they could, even provided a reading list at the end of the book. I was kind of irritated when I read that particular piece of advice, as my reading time at that point had recently diminished to a level where “reading time” meant the 5 minutes I spent in bed at night fuzzily reading the same sentence over and over without realizing it while simultaneously falling off a cliff into the sleep of the truly comatose. Read? When? With what time or energy?

But lo and behold, I guess I’ve somehow been managing to sneak reading in somewhere, because I just updated my reading list on LinkedIn and found that I have, in fact, read 27 books over the last three months–27! I can’t imagine where I found the time (heck, I couldn’t remember the titles of some of them until I read back through my list, to be honest, let alone figuring out what day it was I read them.) And by the way, you who are speed readers out there and whose children are not at home for summer vacation, I don’t want to know that you polished off 48 books in the same time period, okay? 27 for me was a surprisingly plump number.

I scanned the list, reminiscing over the titles. Wow–The Unforgiving Minute? I read that? Yes, I remember now–that was actually really fascinating. The Ten-Year-Nap (Um, yeah…book club book… I do remember that one, if only vaguely…) A Confederacy of Dunces…I’m going to tuck that one away right next to Armies of the Night, on the shelf of books whose writing I admire tremendously but the reading of which irritated the hell out of me…

All of a sudden, reading that list, I found myself so happy–would that be the right word, happy?–to see it, proof as it were, detailed in something I’d only been doing as more of a lark more than anything (there is currently only 1 person following my list, which is possibly one more than there is following my blog. That puts my reading list squarely in the “Lark” category…)

Anyway, it was proof, as I was saying, that I have been reading, much more than I realized I had; proof that I’d also been thinking about what I read (27 books read, and I only recommended 9; of those, I only commented on 3 or 4); proof that my mind, which I’ve been feeling increasingly was on summer vacation right along with my children, was still hard at work, reading, thinking, evaluating, humming along with its inner workings still operating quite nicely, thank you.

Yes. Happy. I was really happy that LinkedIn has that feature, not because I think anybody but that 1 other person out there will pay the slightest attention to what I’m reading and what I think about it, but rather because it I occurred to me that I can use that list now as a tool to track for me, not for anybody else, what I’m reading and whether I liked it and why/why not. (Yes, I know, I could just write the same stuff in a notebook and accomplish the same thing, but this is so much easier and less time-consuming. And, you can look the books up on the site and put their covers right next to your entry about them–it’s like looking back at old yearbook photos of the people at your high school reunion: You look at their faces and wonder how much they have changed since you last saw them, and realize how much you have changed…but I digress.)

LinkedIn’s book listing is just so much sexier than an old ratty spiral notebook–but then, I am married to my Help Desk, so perhaps I’m biased in favor of technology making things easier. Don’t hassle me too much about that, please–I only replaced most of my ratty spirals with a laptop about three years ago. (Just between you and me, I still carry a small one in my purse, just in case.)

So that’s where I’m at today, Mr. King–I’m reading, I’m reading, I’m reading–Hey! I even read you! (if you don’t believe me, check my LinkedIn page for the proof).