It’s not how many books you read
Thursday, April 25, 2024 at 10:39AM
My reading history according to Goodreads.
I am a long-time fan of the social networking site Goodreads. Since 2014, I have recorded 532 books “read.” I have 53 friends with whom I share titles and reviews. And I have participated in the Reading Challenge for a number of years, slowly increasing the number of books I intend to read to 52 - one per week.
While I plan to continue using Goodreads to record and share comments about the books I read, I am going to abandon the Reading Challenge. It makes me too anxious.
Motivated by watching the new Shogun streaming series, I decided to re-read Clavell’s novel on which it is based. I believe this is the third time I’ve greatly enjoyed this 1000 page tome.
The problem is that I have been reading it since April 7th - for well over two weeks. It’s completely destroyed the pace of books I need to complete to meet my 52 book challenge for 2024. Yes, I could listen to audiobooks (I still think of them as books-on-tape.) on long drives. I could purposely select short, easy-to-read titles. I suppose I could even up the number of hours each day I dedicate to reading books, cutting back on newspapers, click bait, and solitaire.
Instead I will ignore the challenge. There are just some authors (Clavell, Michener, McMurtry, Tolkien among them) who do spin very long, but very good tales I just can’t abandon. I read non-fiction titles that may not be as gripping as thrillers and so are less compelling to read and so take longer. Like walking or biking, I need to relax and enjoy the experience rather than try to meet some extrinsic, self-imposed velocity.
And I will be happier for it.
Reader Comments (2)
that's what graphic novels amd middle grade are for. 😂
Hi Jeri,
They'd probably be about right for my maturity level too!
Hope you are doing well!
Doug