For years I’ve kept an ongoing lists of books to read on numerous pieces of scrap paper tucked into the pages of a journal of books I have read.

It was a semi-functional system.

Recently I decided to embrace both technology and organization and upgraded to Pinterest.

I’m loving it.

It’s often just as easy to pin a book as it is to jot it down on a piece of paper and it’s much harder to lose. Then, when I’m in need of a new book, I scan through my “books to read” board, hop on my favorite inter-library loan system and request a few books.

It’s a significant upgrade from lost scraps of paper and I love that my new “list” shows me the collection of covers rather than just titles. Since my upgrade I have been known to hone in on a book cover that looks familiar at book stores, libraries and friends bookshelves, finding what I would never have remembered had I relied on my list of titles. And when the miracles of inter-library loan puts a copy in my hand, the title may still be unfamiliar but the cover will often remind me why I wanted to read it in the first place.

Often, but not always…

Sometimes I get a book I have requested from the library and wonder things like, ” Why on earth was I planning on reading a book titled The Devil in Montmartre?” 

But I read it anyway because I wouldn’t have pinned it and then requested it from the library without reason, even if I couldn’t for the life of me remember why I would have wanted to read such a terrifying sounding and looking book.

Which was good because once I read it I discovered that the reason I must have requested it was that it was focused on the 1889 forensic techniques used to solve a murder in Montmartre Paris, and that was pretty darn cool.

Would I recommend it? This is set in Montmartre at the time of the Moulin Rouge. And yes, everything illicit that comes to mind is in here, plus a bit more, as well as a really irritating doormat of a wife and a rather gruesome murder. So it’s not for the feminist, squeamish, prudish or my mother because sometimes there are books that you’d rather your mother didn’t also read no matter how old you are.

But the forensic stuff was good…