Pittsylvania County Library Blog

The library sponsors two book discussion groups; the newest one is focused this first year on the theme “Good Jobs, Good Work.”  When several of us were working on the list of books, the only one that made it onto the list with which I was unfamiliar was The Known World by Edward P. Jones.  I came to it with a reluctance I cannot explain, but I learned quite quickly in reading it that it is a masterpiece.

Jones writes about something that happened in Virginia which has received little scrutiny:  the phenomenon of free African Americans who owned slaves.   The book is set in the largest county in Virginia in the 1840s, a fictional place called Manchester County.

This is not the typical story of slavery in America [if in fact a typical story exists].  Everyone in the narrative is a mix of good and bad qualities.  No one is a complete villain or saint.  In short, the characters are human—all too human.  For me, the importance of the relationships in the narrative is what drives the novel and what makes it interesting to me.

Jones shows that the issues that pile up around power and its use against our fellow human beings are colorblind.  In slavery, we see those issues writ large.  There are people striving to be free, and people who are in the business of denying them that freedom.  There are people who believe slavery to be an evil, and yet who are caught in its web so fully that they seem incapable of extricating themselves.

Why would such a book be in a discussion list for “Good Jobs, Good Work”? For one thing, we need to realize as we talk about ways our community can survive and thrive, that we dare not exclude anyone from the discussion.  In a community brought low by economic reality, it will take all of us and all of our ideas to extricate ourselves.  Rather than being worried about our own stature and power and safety, we need to remember that as a community we are only as strong as our weakest members.

We need everyone, and we will survive or fail together.

Last time I wrote, I mentioned lists of favorite books of 2010.  If you would like to see a list compiled from the librarians who post on the PUBLIB listserv, go here:

https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AlfcdgSJG-0JdGh0U0h5QU82WmFtenloREJOUmhWVmc&hl=en&authkey=CPOd-60E#gid=0

Next time, I’ll tell you about my experiences with my new Nook ebook reader.

Would you be surprised to know that librarians compile lists of their favorite books each year?  Believe it or not, we do.  When I read the lists, I am struck by a couple of thoughts.  First, there seems to be a little posturing going on if you read things meant for the eyes of other librarians.  Librarians trying to impress other librarians with their erudition–It’s not pretty.

But I am also struck by the diversity in the profession.    We are book sluts, we’ll read just about anything and everything, and we have opinions, too.  Some books are light and fun, and others on these lists are heavy tomes—for example, Prince of Networks:  Bruno Latour and Metaphysics by Graham Harman was one person’s pick.   [See my comment above about posturing].

So, what would I recommend?  My number one favorite audiobook this year was The Help by Kathryn Stockett, read by four different actors who do a superb job of voicing the African American characters.  The performance was exceptional, and the story entirely worthy of the talent employed to read it.

I just finished reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson on audiobook, another gripping book.  Going in, I did not think this was my style, and there are extremely graphic sections that are difficult, but the story keeps the listener engaged.   I look forward to reading the next in the trilogy.  Larsson died in 2004 of a heart attack when he was only 50 years old, so this series ends too quickly.

I read Jan Karon’s latest Father Tim book, In the Company of Others.  I like to read Karon when life seems particularly crazy.  This book was set in Ireland and had a bit of a mystery woven in.  Karon proclaimed it her favorite of her own books, and I enjoyed it.

Some of you may know that I have more than a passing interest in theology.  I decided to read Stanley Hauerwas’s autobiographical Hannah’s Child recently—just named one of the top ten theological books of the year by Publishers Weekly–and it was the type of book that you continue to think about for weeks afterward.  Compelling and thought-provoking , honest, and impossible to put down.

I could go on, of course, but enough about me.  Here is a list of recommended books I have culled from other librarians.

Columbine by Dave Cullen

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

The Tiger:  A True Story of Vengeance and Survival by John Vaillant

Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalierr

Alice I have Been by Melanie Benjamin

Unfinished Desires by Gail Godwin

The Blind Contessa’s New Machine by Carey Wallace

Read My Pins by Madeleine Albright

The Air We Breathe by Andrea Barrett

Beatrice and Virgil by Yann Martel

The Next Queen of Heaven by Gregory Maguire

Dash and Lily’s Book of Dares by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan

Thirteen Days to Midnight by Patrick Carman

There are many more recommendations from my fellow librarians than I can list here.  Now how about you?  What would YOU recommend as a great book from 2010?

As some of you know, I spend quite a bit of time in my car. For one thing, I have a fairly long drive to work—it takes about forty minutes. Not bad in major metro areas, but for here it seems long., though that is mitigated by the beauty of the road I take. I also seem to have a significant list of professional meetings each year that require my attendance. So my car and I know each other very well.
One of the things that makes all this traveling easier is heated seats.  Some day I’ll write an ode to this modern invention.  Another is audiobooks. I have listened to audios since the “books on tape” days.People think librarians read every book in the library. Though that’s impossible, I have certainly doubled what I can read with this method. I usually distinguish for my friends, “I read that one with my ears, not my eyes.” I think it makes a difference.
For one thing, I have found that I can’t read anything and everything this way. I was on a committee for the Virginia Library Association some years ago that required me to drive to Charlottesville frequently. I decided to read Anna Karenina with my ears on these long trips. I struggled mightily, but the reader’s voice tended to put me to sleep, and that was not a good thing.
Reader’s voices are extremely important in audiobooks, and so are the readers’ accents. I am driven to distraction by books by Southern authors, read by someone “not from around here” who attempts to imitate a Southern accent. It’s usually a disaster. What’s up with that? Do the producers of audios think native Southerners incapable of reading aloud?
On the other hand, readers can have just the right touch with a book—for example, the great John McDonough does a masterful job reading the Mitford books of Jan Karon. He even sings the hymns that are quoted therein. When the company switched to another reader for the Father Tim novels, I actually complained to the rep that visits me here at the library. What were they thinking? I heard Jan Karon herself laud John McDonough. Was he just busy? Too expensive? She didn’t know. John McDonough is Father Tim. I am reading the new series with my eyes. It’s too distracting otherwise to listen to this new imposter. [Sorry, Scott Sowers, I am sure you are a lovely man].
Mysteries are usually good. The tug of the narrative arc usually keeps me engaged, and therefore awake. In fact, I have been so engrossed in the occasional mystery that I realize I have no idea where on Route 57 I am en route to the library. That’s probably not a good thing either, but here’s hoping the powers that be do not get wind of the “driving distracted” phenomenon that can be created by the audiobook.  Beware, however, of the mystery with an important Southern character, read by a Yankee.   See complaint above.

Exhibit 1--Southern character, Yankee reader

In another category entirely are the books read by their authors. These are just puzzling sometimes. How can someone who authored a work have no idea how to read it? Are they surprised that the text seems somewhat familiar?
Happily, the book I am reading now, though read by its author, suffers nothing in the translation. It’s I Remember Nothing by Nora Ephron. You may know her by her work in films; she’s the screenwriter of When Harry Met Sally, Silkwood, Julie and Julia, and Sleepless in Seattle. Ms. Ephron’s droll delivery belies the humor in this book; I started it on the way to work and within ten minutes was laughing out loud at her essay on memory loss. Don’t ask me to tell you more about it, though; I can’t remember.

Sometimes when I am on vacation I take time to reassess priorities in my life. Part of that process for me is thinking about how I got where I am right now, and acknowledging those who guided me on the journey. Two people who helped me are library directors for whom I used to work, and I have had encounters with both of them recently.

I read a newspaper article interviewing the woman who hired me when I was in high school to re-shelve books at our local library. The article stated that she came to that library as the director fifty years ago [How could that be?].  Still very much involved with libraries and their issues, she reveals in this interview that the dry sense of humor she had back then is still intact. One of her recollections was of when she first arrived in town:

Actually the whole town accepted me right away, although I did get looked up and down the first few times I had lunch in the Coffee Cup. They were not really accustomed to strangers in there. I thought I should get a sandwich board saying ‘I’m the new librarian, just call me Ardath.’

The second director gave me my first adult library job. I’m not sure exactly why she hired me; I think perhaps it was due to a phone call from a mutual friend urging her to do it. At any rate, she took a chance on me. She made sure that I understood the core values of librarianship—equality of access to information for all the people in our community, protecting the privacy of the patron, promoting lifelong learning, resisting censorship, providing high levels of service to users of the library. I came to the library with a good education and a real affection for libraries, but I needed to learn these values so that my professional practice was at the high level of her expectations and served the library and the community well. She did not accept less than our best, and I am a better librarian today because of that. It’s great to have two mentors who have stayed interested and involved with the world of libraries. As anyone who has been in one lately knows, libraries today are radically different than they were during the careers of these two women. Yet the fundamentals are still intact—we work every day to connect people with the information they need. When I review the influence these two had on me, I realize that I am standing on the shoulders of giants. [1] [“If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants.”  Isaac Newton.  http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton]

Who’s your giant?

Yesterday marked the official launch of the library’s program, Health Information & Advocacy @ Your Library. The speaker for the event was Susan Paynter, local writer and library advocate. Here are her remarks:

Just before I was asked to speak here, I’d been thinking about my family, and my community. And how much a small community like Chatham is like a family. Then I started thinking:

What if Chatham was a family?

Which buildings would be which people?

Well, I thought about the Courthouse…with its authority and sense of fairness…meting out discipline when necessary…and I decided the courthouse would be the father.

The houses of worship, with their eons of wisdom, might be the grandparents.

The police station, looking out for us and keeping us safe, could be our big brother.

And the library?

That’s pretty easy.

Teaching…nourishing…inspiring…encouraging…entertaining…guiding…
standing by to help when we need it:

That sounds like Mom!

And now, with this new Health Information & Advocacy program, Mom’s got a brand new medicine cabinet.

I don’t know if you’ve ever turned to the Internet for information on a disease that runs in your family, or a loved-one’s diagnosis, or a new medication, or treatment options, or some other medical question. I know I have, and did I get confused! It felt less like an information medicine cabinet and more like a little shop of horrors.

It was filled with contradictory information, people trying to sell cures, therapies and treatments, and testimonials that may or may not have been genuine.

How are you supposed to know?

There was too much information and no way to judge it.

Modern life is like that. It’s filled with too many claims and choices, and we just end up baffled!

I’ll share an embarrassing little story, just to illustrate.

The other day I was at the Food Lion. I had bathroom tissue on my list. I usually get the same-old-same-old. But I thought “Maybe it’s time to analyze the situation.” So I stood there staring at an acre of choices, paralyzed with indecision! They had regular rolls, double rolls and mega rolls. There was soft and ultra-soft. Super-absorbent, quilted, squeezable and huggable. And a new one for me: TUG-able!

They came in single rolls, 4-packs, 8-packs, 12-packs and 24-packs. I looked at the unit pricing: you know, how many cents per little square? But how do you weigh the 1-ply against the 2-ply? It was all too much! I finally grabbed a 4-pack of the house brand and fled the scene. I mean, it doesn’t really matter, does it?

But when you’re faced with that kind of confusion as you analyze medical information it does matter. It matters a lot. You can’t just grab and run.

Once you’ve spent some time on line looking for information on health & wellness you begin to realize that snake oil salesmen aren’t just colorful figures from the 19th century; they’re alive and well and thriving on the Internet.

And that’s what’s so exciting about this new program.

The only thing the library sells is used books. So when they give you medical information, you know that the only criteria they use are quality, accuracy and helpfulness. And librarians have a code of ethics and confidentiality they take just as seriously as any doctor does. Our privacy is sacred to them. When we ask for their help, they treat us with respect and dignity, even when we’re clueless! They never laugh or roll their eyes.

We’ve known since we were kids in school that we go to the library when we need information. Mothing much has really changed. It’s just gotten better.

They still have a wonderful collection of books on health & well-being. But this new program is like an all-encompassing healthcare website. One you can trust. It’s got up-to-the-minute information you can’t get from printed books. And it’ll tell you about local resources and services which books can’t possibly do.

So if you’re confused by what your doctor told you, if you’re worried about a diagnosis, if you want to know what your medical options are…

Come to Mom!

She’s at every branch of the Pittsylvania County Public Library. And she never sleeps. She’s always available on the library’s website:

WWW.PCPLIB.ORG

I am a proponent of the local—whether it is local restaurants, local banks, local businesses.  I guess it’s part of my heritage.  I grew up in a small town in Ohio and I have never lost my love of places where you can walk to a good restaurant, or to your bank [don’t walk up to the drive-through window, though!], or to your library [shameless plug].  My personal take on the world is that we might all be better off if we recognized that small is beautiful.

Our recent library discussion group on books around the theme “Good Jobs, Good Work” has made me see even more clearly the beauty of that which is small in scale, personal, and local.  For example, contrast those banks that were “too big to fail” with the ones where the banker knows your name, where his son plays soccer with your daughter.

See what I mean?

When we were first married, we walked into the bank with our jobs, our good name, and no other assets, to get a car loan.  The person who saw us called us by name, smiled, and helped us transact our business.  They knew us and knew what the likelihood was that we would pay that loan back to them [pretty likely].  By the same thinking, they didn’t make loans to those neighbors who couldn’t pay them back; it would have destroyed the bank’s reputation and, in the long run, hurt the neighbors, too.

In the spirit of that, of knowing your neighbors and helping them, I’d like to recommend a project to you.  It’s called the 3/50 Project. Simply put, the founder of this movement, Cinda Baxter, says “Frequent three local brick and mortar businesses you don’t want to see disappear, and spend a very affordable $50 per month there. . . .It’s about funneling revenue back into local business. You know-—the folks that pour money back into the community via commercial property taxes, payroll taxes, sales tax, and salaries (not to mention all that good will by way of volunteer time, silent auctions, sponsored softball teams, workshops, book signings, etc.).”[1] She doesn’t’ mean this to be an “all or nothing” proposition; she doesn’t insist we stop shopping in chains or franchises.  It’s about balance—redirecting $50 back to the locally owned, independent businesses. “We simply need to think about where our dollars are best invested, consider the greater amount of revenue local businesses return to the community, then purchase accordingly. Otherwise, local economies suffer irreparable harm.”[2]

One of the best things about running a small-town library system is getting to know the people—not just those of you who come into our buildings, but also those of you who use our website, or eat up the street, who call me by name when I walk to the post office in the afternoon.  Maybe that means something to you, too.  In fact, I would wager it’s one of the reasons you live here instead of elsewhere—that personal connection with your neighbors.

One way to keep that from disappearing is to spend our money locally.  Wendell Berry, in Seventeen Rules for Sustainable Communites [3] says that we should make sure that money paid into the local economy circulates within the community and decrease expenditures outside the community.

Sounds like a good idea to me.

[2] http://www.the350project.net/about.html

[3] http://utahlinks.org/rp/docs/Rules_WBerry.pdf The other sixteen rules are worth reading, too!

Vivian Robertson is passionate about history.  For that, she credits her dad, who took her [actually, “dragged” is the term she uses] to the historical sites in our region from Appomattox to Mt. Vernon, from Gettysburg to Monticello.  From that beginning she discovered how fascinating it is to find out about history that has a face—whether that face is hers, those of her family members, or of people who live in our region.

That desire to know about what has happened in the past led her to be involved in two books about Pittsylvania County history; the official titles are Pittsylvania County, Virginia, Heritage 1767-2004, and Pittsylvania County, Virginia, Heritage 1767-2006, Volume 2.  We at the library just call them “the heritage books” and we view them as nothing less than local treasure.

Vivian would tell you quite quickly that a committee produced these books, and that’s true—in the first volume a photo shows twenty-two people who guided the process, and Roger and Anna Dodson served as the committee chairpersons.   Vivian said that most people who worked on the first book came back for the second.   It’s clear that these folks have made for the rest of us something of which they can justifiably be proud.  It’s a true labor of love.

When the books were done, the committee had some funding left and, as good stewards of the county’s history, they realized that there was a particular interest in some of the artifacts that represent Gretna’s past.  They approached us at the library about placing a display case that would showcase these types of items in our branch in Gretna.  The result is a beautiful cabinet, hand crafted by Fowler’s Pride Woodworking of Blairs, which contains bits of the history of the Gretna area.  The cabinet is lighted and locked, glass-fronted and secure, something that will last for many years and bring happiness to people in the same way the heritage books do.

Looking for memorabilia of retailers who live in your memory, if not on the streets of Gretna?  Peer into the display case, and there you will see photos of them, and the little items they gave away to their customers.  How about the railroad?  There’s a telegraph key from the Gretna train station.  Remember the old telephones that had a trumpet-looking handset?  Or the old flatirons that were heated on the stove?  If you want to show your children or grandchildren what those looked like, a trip to the Gretna library should be on your itinerary.

When Vivian talks about these items, though, the depth of her interest in them shines through.  She knows these objects—if she is too young to have seen them used, then nevertheless, she has a knowledge of them received through study and through conversations with other county residents.

What Vivian Robertson has done for Pittsylvania County, and particularly for Gretna, is simple, and yet profound.  She’s found a way to preserve and display the heritage written about in books so that all of us, young and old alike, can look, learn, and remember.  In her recent This Book is Overdue!, Marilyn Johnson says, “We are all living history, and it’s hard to say now what will be important in the future.  One thing’s certain, though:  if we throw it away, it’s gone.”  If it’s up to Vivian Robertson, that’s not going to happen.

Everyone talks about “beach reads,” summer books, and summer reading.  What is usually meant is books of a less serious nature, books over which you can gracefully slump in your beach chair, a little wiffling snore emitting from your slack jaw from time to time.  Paperback books with greasy sunscreen stains, not heavy tomes meant to improve your mind.

For some reason this summer, I have been reading nonfiction, but with a twist—I’ve excavated a seam of nonfiction books that read like fiction.    Even though we may put nonfiction into that “mind improving” category, these particular books make the grade as “beach reads.”

What are the main characteristics of books like this?  I would say that they have one or both of these two things:  strong characters and a compelling plot.  All the other elements of literature—setting, theme, point of view—are less important, I think, than these two when nonfiction crosses over to the “reads like fiction” camp.

So on to the books.  The first one I read is titled Provenance: How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art, by Laney Salisbury and Aly Sujo.  It’s the story of a true con artist, John Drewe, who teamed up with a struggling painter, John Myatt, and together fooled many professionals in museums and the art world into believing the art Myatt produced had been created by some of the greatest artists of modernity.   Drewe is no ordinary swindler.  He manages to create “provenance” [the term in this case has to do with the history of ownership of an object] for these forgeries, and takes creation of fake documentation to a whole new level.  He even inserts these provenance documents into historical archives at the great Tate Museum in London, believing that security at an archive is more concerned with the removal of documents than they are with the insertion of phony ones into the cultural record.  He had ingratiated himself with curators at the Tate by giving the museum two paintings by Bissiere, which led to his ability to get past their security:

The grand moment in the reception finally arrived. Two white-gloved Tate conservators entered the room with a pair of paintings, each about five feet tall. There was a moment of respectful silence. Myatt was stunned.

“Ahh, the Bissières, how lovely,”someone in the room whispered.

Myatt cringed as the group praised the paintings and Drewe’s taste and generosity. The two works were carried around the room, and long before they reached Myatt, he recognized the faint but acrid smell of the varnish he had sprayed on them when he’d finished them a few weeks earlier.

When Drewe is finally caught, it’s the ordinary people of the art world who help to bring him down—historians and archivists convinced that something is fishy, and who refuse to ignore their instincts.

The second book I want to mention is The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls.  The story of Walls’s childhood, one in which she was neglected, if not abused, by parents who were intelligent and able, but who chose lives of dysfunction and drift.  Walls’s tone is matter-of-fact as she relates their moves across country and the ways she and her siblings finally escaped to a different life.  She is clear-eyed, she is unsentimental, but the fact that she still loves her parents comes through every episode of her account.  A fantastic storyteller, Walls is now the gossip columnist for MSNBC.com.    No kidding.

If you like the idea of nonfiction that reads like fiction, then here’s a great resource for you—and of course, it’s written by librarians:  http://www.madisonpubliclibrary.org/booklists/nonfictionreads.html.

Don’t forget your sunscreen!

There are whole industries or market segments dedicated to getting organized.   Some months it seems that every magazine has an article about how to get your life in hand and keep your stuff from controlling you.  Each catalog that arrives seems to have a section devoted to “organizational tools”—whether that is a fancy electronic calendar or sets of file folders in colors, or wicker baskets with file inserts, or big plastic tubs.  We build bigger and better houses to put all our stuff in, and then we rent storage units for the overflow—units that we may never look in again once we rent them.

Earlier this summer I had the task of starting to close a family home.  In this particular instance, the residents had lived there since 1953.  One of the couple’s granddaughters said, “Grandma was a hoarder, but she was an organized hoarder.”  This was the truth—there were checks in that house from the sixties, but they were all in order by year.  Did they buy a radio in 1974?  I can tell you what it cost them because they still had the sales receipt in a file clearly marked with the date.

I had, of course, some idea of what I was facing, which might explain my fairly recent fascination with Antiques Roadshow on PBS.  http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/roadshow/ That show has been on for years—it’s in its fourteenth season—and I never once watched it; since January, however, I have hardly missed an episode.  I love to see people discover that ugly vase given to them by Aunt Maude is actually worth $15,000.  You can imagine the lovely narrative that’s been running in my head about all the stuff in this family home of ours.  The problem is that getting from the ugly vase to the $15,000 takes a bit of work and research, not to mention rubber gloves, Endust, and perspiration.

One day when I walked through the stacks at our Chatham library, I saw Sell, Keep, or Toss:  How to Downsize a Home, Settle an Estate, and Appraise Personal Property, by Harry L. Rinker.  I just happened to glance down and spot it.  We librarians call this “browsing serendipity.”  Just like some stray cat that I didn’t really want, but whose face I couldn’t forget, I finally went back, picked it up, and took it home.

I think I am a little in love with Harry Rinker.

You don’t want someone who is wishy-washy when they are telling you what to do with fifty years of accumulated detritus.  Rinker has a method that seems helpful, a plan to follow to get your house from an organizational nightmare to what he calls “broom clean” and ready for sale.    He makes you believe you can do it.  He even tells you how long it’s going to take.  No, really!

He also shows you that you need to be realistic about what your things are worth, but that very few things need to go to the junk pile.   That advice alone led me to look online for some things and discover that baby boomers reliving their youth think that it would be cool to have a 1950s era yo-yo.  That thing would have been in a trash can instead of on eBay, where it sold rather quickly, thank you.

So, my reading advice this week has nothing to do with great literature and everything to do with what some call bibliotherapy, using a book to help a person solve a problem.   Harry Rinker is helping me solve mine, and whatever problem you may have, I can pretty much guarantee you that there’s a book to help.  We’d be happy to help you find it here at the library.

My husband and I are book collectors. Actually, some might call him a book hoarder [à la that TV show]. When we were in our twenties, we moved to Virginia, and the kind gentlemen who helped us carry our boxes into our apartment said my husband had more books than any other man then living in the Commonwealth.

If you think about this, it’s a little crazy. I mean, I’m a librarian. One of the great perks of this profession is that I am surrounded by books all day, every day, and I can pretty much get my hands on any book I want. So why, you might ask, would I ever buy a book when I can get them for free.

Good question.

It’s a disease. It’s a sickness, but it’s clear to our friends that we are not looking for a cure.

That’s why we were both happy to discover the joys of LibraryThing. You can see it at www.librarything.com.  LibraryThing is in fact many things—a catalog, a review source, a social network, a community of book lovers. You can keep track of your reading in LibraryThing, and read what others have said about a book. You can keep a list of books you’d like to read. You can read reviews others have written, or write your own.

But the part that excited my husband most was the ability to catalog all of our books.

I found that rather amusing.

You have to understand that in the library world, catalogers are a breed unto themselves. They love detail, they love rules, and they love to keep everything orderly. Not one of these characteristics describes my husband. So imagine my surprise when I gave him a ten dollar bar code scanner and he was deliriously happy.

So happy that I didn’t see much of him for the next month. Why? He was spending all his time with that CueCat, scanning his entire book collection into LibraryThing.

Cutest barcode scanner ever

Here at the library, we happen to think that our catalog is pretty cool, too, and I hope you feel the same way. It’s got book jacket covers and lots of pertinent information. Sometime in the next few months we will add more enhancements.  But for those of you who have your own stacks of books at home–or your very own hoard [you know who you are]– take a look at LibraryThing.   Do you fit that cataloger profile?  You can get the joy of being a librarian, just by putting order into the chaos of those books you own.  [Or, as Karen Schneider once pointed out, if your house burns down, you’ll know which books you used to own--your list will be on LibraryThing].

Here’s another thought.  If you keep track of what you read in your LibraryThing account, you will always have the answer to the age-old question of voracious readers—“Hey, have I already read this?”

That alone might make it worth the effort.