No, it’s not notches on my bedpost, it’s my books.
Every time I read a book cover to cover, I put a little star sticker 
on the spine of the book, and put it up on my bookshelf.
I didn’t read much growing up. It wasn’t until I came to the US for a year in high school that I started to take reading more seriously. Not that we didn’t have books to read when I was in Venezuela, I was just not into them. I’d read a little bit, and it would be enough to pass the test. I also remember not reading books at ALL and getting to the test completely clueless as to what the heck they were asking me about.
The first book I read back-to-back, that I remember, was The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath. Maybe it was the excitement I felt from actually finishing a book in English, but I fell in love with that book, and I wondered if I would get the same feeling of accomplishment no matter which book I read. The second book I finished cover to cover was A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce. Again: I LOVED it. I love the rush of finishing a book. I love the rush of knowing there are 30 pages left and I could be done in the same sitting.
Last June I got hooked on the Twilight Series, by Stephenie Meyer. Each book is more than 500 pages long, and I managed to read all 4 of them in just 6 weeks. I think those are my biggest trophies to date.
I once rented a book from the library, which Erin suggested to me, called Happens Every Day: An All-Too-True Story. I read it in less than a week, and returned it. Ever since then, I have felt this void in my bookshelf. Like there is a book-shaped whole in it, and a star sticker left unused. I’m seriously considering buying the book (I buy them used and cheap), just so that I can put a sticker on it and fill that void. Without it, it’s as if my reading it had never happened, and I just can’t live with that. It’s the same feeling Dexter has about his blood slides. I can TOTALLY relate.
Do you have trophies?
ina