Books As Memory Markers

Rebecca Makkai lists the top five books she would save from a fire. One was a blank hand-bound book she received as a wedding gift:

We couldn’t see ourselves asking people to sign it. I wasn’t about to fill it with crappy story drafts or start journaling. So we began writing down every book we read. (Jon gets the left page and I get the right. As you can tell, he’s a much faster reader.) It’s made me more determined to finish things, in the same way my childhood library’s summer reading program once did. It’s also the best diary I could have. If I want to remember December, 2003, I just need to see that I was reading Motherless Brooklyn and it all comes back: pneumonia, hospital, striped sweater, and the last time I ever played tennis.

And it’s also afforded me the greatest insult I could give a book. When a book is so extraordinarily bad that I’d be embarrassed to record it—terrified that my grandchildren, after I’m gone, might pick this one book off the list and read it to see what kind of person I was—I’ll refuse to write it down. It’s a rare punishment, one I’ve only exercised a few times. And therein lies the essay I’ll never write, a companion to this one: The Five Books I’d Consign to the Flames.