So I should start compiling my list of the books I read in the past year, before I start to forget what they were. One thing that will make this job difficult this year is that a lot of the books I read were in ebook form. It's tough when there isn't a stack of printed paper books by the bed.

One paper book I am reading now and just dying for is Robert Musil's "Five Women." Musil is the author of "Young Törless," which I adored a while ago. Found this new (to me) book at the last bookstore in Harvard Square, when I was there this winter. It is hard to believe that Harvard Square, where I spent so much time kicking around as a 19- and 20-year-old, going to bookstores and record stores, has so few bookstores and record stores left. This is a tedious thing to point out but I will point it out.

Another serendipitous find at this same bookstore was a small volume called "The Nightmare of a Victorian Bestseller." It's about the life of Martin Farquhar Tupper, a distant relative of mine who wrote a bestselling volume of inspiring poetry and then spent the rest of his life first as a celebrity and then as a wreck of a former celebrity. His book of poetry stayed in print for 80 years. There were three copies of this biography of him on the shelf, and I bought two, because I know father W would enjoy reading this book. It makes many flattering references to the American branch of the Tupper family, evidently my people, which supposedly had a distinguished fighting record in the Revolutionary War. And a member of that same family, of course, invented Tupperware.

I had a third astonishing find at this same bookstore but can't recall it. So why do I think I can recall every book I read in the entire past year?