I took stock of all of my Appendix N reading to date, which entailed a mix of staring off into space, combing my shelves, and blowing the dust off my long-dormant Goodreads account.
Of the 29 authors in Appendix N (well, 28 plus an editor), I have:
- Completed the listed reading for six of them
- Read at least one book from another five authors
- Read a total of 46 books (34 listed, 11 for “et al” entries, and one straggler)
I made it further than I thought back in 2013!
And as of this evening, I finished Fredric Brown’s excellent Rogue in Space — one author closer to an initial pass. Brown is one of several authors I likely wouldn’t have checked out were it not for Appendix N.
Returning to Appendix N reading has once again shown me the power of two things: tracking media consumption, and maintaining my own website. I used to track books on Goodreads, which enabled me to figure out where I left off with Appendix N. I haven’t found Goodreads enjoyable to use for many years, though, so I’ve moved all my tracking to a spreadsheet. MartinRalya.com has been online since 2009, even during long stretches where I wasn’t engaging with it, which meant that all my past thoughts and research and poking into Appendix N were all still here, waiting for me to dust them off and look at them with fresh eyes.
If I’d kept it on Google+, it’d have been gone for years. Twitter? Deleted that account as soon as Musk took over. Facebook went as soon as I realized it was an oozing pustule. The older I get, the longer that list will get. But hosting your own shit? That’s as close to forever as the internet gets.