I see what you mean, Ethan, and I have been using text files for the same thing. The problem is that I don't consult said lists often enough, so although I know I have the list floating around, it's often not at my fingertips (I don't sync my Treo enough to have it with me all the time either).
And though reading a book certainly involves more than one step, I would treat it more like a 'taskproject'
moving through my workflow, not a set of discrete tasks to accomplish. For example:
- War and Peace lives in my theoretical booklist for a while
- When I make my selection, I move it to an actionable context (likely a Single Action List) and rename. It becomes Get War and Peace at Library @Errands
- When I pick it up, I rename/recontextualize it to Read War and Peace @Anywhere.
There it lives in peace until it's checked off as done.
And while I don't get the satisfaction of marking numerous tasks complete, there's something satisfying about the flow of a single database entity from my book list all the way to Done.