ByGD
Despite my personal history of book club and book challenge failures, I am slowly plugging away at the Reading Around the World challenge. I started early in 2020 with Afghanistan and Albania. When the libraries reopened, I got started again with books from Algeria and Andorra. Finding an Andorran book was a challenge. Choosing a book for the next country, Angola, wasn’t easy either, but the book I chose, Transparent City by Ondjaki, presented some challenges of its own.
ByGD
March is a little late to be summarizing the previous year’s reading. But I was busy in January and forgot in February, so here we are. I like looking back at my book-year regardless of when I get around to it. So if you have any interest in my reading life, here we go. My 2020 in books.
ByGD
Another year, another Goodreads Challenge. Since I started reading so many graphic novels, setting my challenge goal has been a challenge in itself. On the one hand, I happily recognize graphic novels as real books. On the other hand, it takes about one hour to read a volume of manga, where the average novel takes about 12 hours. So I set a ridiculously high goal that includes both, but I try to sort my results so I can see how much “regular reading” I did apart from “graphic reading.” I’m probably the only person who cares about my reading data, but since I got to read a lot of interesting books last year, you might want to read on to discover some cool stories.
Read More
ByGD
Last year I set a reading challenge on Goodreads. I think it was for 35 books, but I hit the goal in September and raised the bar to 50.
Not to fifty!
I read a lot of middle grade and romance books, which tend to be short, so it inflates my count. At the end of the year, Goodreads made this cute little report on my reading habits that I thought would be fun to share here on the blog. After a bit of futzing around, I’ve given up on trying to keep the cute formatting. Sorry about that. I tried to make up for it by inserting links to related blog posts. Anyway, here’s what I read last year.
books
pages
MY AVERAGE RATING FOR 2015
106%
ByGD
My TBR bookcase.
In the absence of a regular paycheck, I’ve started paying closer attention to my budget, and it has reminded me that everyone has financial blind spots. It’s easy for me to see that my husband spends too much money on technical gear. But when it comes to buying books, the money I spend never gets subtracted from my mental balance sheet.
The worst part is that I already have an entire bookcase of unread books in my house, as well as a long list of library holds. The Japanese concept of tsundoku has been getting a lot of attention lately, and I may be the poster child. But I don’t buy books for the emotional gratitude of owning them – at least, I don’t only buy books for that reason. I really do intend to read them, and I do work my way through the piles. It’s just that there is no hope of my ever reading them faster than I bring them into the house. I get two to three unsolicited ARCs in the mail each week, and these alone account for more reading than I could possibly do in a lifetime.
So, in the interest of shining a light on my own blindness, and to give a little love to my impulsive purchases that may never get read, here is a summary of my October book purchases. Read More
