I keep a log of every significant thing I read, and have done so for many years.  Now that I am back in school, I find myself reading broadly, beyond the textbooks, for my many required papers.  The system that I have adopted over the years is as follows:

The Date I finished reading the text

The Title of the text  (essays, short fiction, and plays in quotation marks)

The Author of the text  (I try to rotate authors as much as possible)

The Length of the text (in pages, or in lines for poetry)

The Publication Date

I then attempt to rate the quality of the text using a four-tiered system:

Two-Stars (for the very best books or pieces I encounter)

One-Star (for those I would recommend to literate friends)

Blank (for those texts which were just average and not particularly impressive)

X (for those texts sufficiently bad as to have no real redeeming qualities)

2019 Reading Challenge

A Classics Reading Challenge for 2019:

A 19th Century Classic = 

A 20th Century Classic = The 42nd Parallel--John Dos Passos (1930) and "Live and Let Die"--Ian Fleming (1954) and

A Classic by a Woman Author = 

A Classic in Translation = 

A Classic Comic Novel = 

A Classic Tragic Novel = 

A Very Long Classic (more than 500 pages) = 

A Classic Novella (less than 250 pages) = "Death in Venice"--Thomas Mann (1911) and "The Warden"--Anthony Trollope (1855) and "The Lifted Veil"--George Eliot (1859) and "The Sorrows of Young Werther"--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1774) and "The Assassination Bureau, Ltd."--Jack London (1910) and

A Classic from the Americas = "Selected Poems--Langston Hughes (1959) and

A Classic from Africa, Asia, or Oceania = 

A Classic from a Place I've Lived = 

A Classic Play (before 1969) = "The Playboy of the Western World"--John Millington Synge (1907) and"Uncle Vanya"--Anton Chekhov (1898) and "Six Characters in Search of an Author"--Luigi Pirandello (1921) ands "Shall We Join the Ladies"--J. M. Barrie (1928) and "The Miser"--Moliere (1668) and "The Inspector General"--Nikolai Gogol (1836) and "The Skin of Our Teeth"--Thornton Wilder (1942) and "The Beaux Stratagem"--George Farquhar (1707) and "The Physician in Spite of Himself"--Moliere (1666) and "No Exit"--Jean-Paul Sartre (1944) and