"Outside a dog a book is man's best friend, inside a dog it is too dark to read!" -Groucho Marx========="The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid." -Jane Austen========="I don’t believe in the kind of magic in my books. But I do believe something very magical can happen when you read a good book."-JK Rowling========"I spend a lot of time reading." -Bill Gates=========“Ahhh. Bed, book, kitten, sandwich. All one needed in life, really.” -Jacqueline Kelly=========

Wednesday, January 9, 2019

Bookish [and not so bookish] thoughts


In an effort to wrap up 2018, today I spent a bit of time cleaning up my Goodreads list by adding tags I'd forgotten to add when I read the books and going back and adding a new tag, "reviewed" to all the books that I wrote reviews for sometime during the year. It took a little time since I had to cross check Goodreads with my blogpost list. Sometimes I don't title my reviews with the name of the book, so that meant I had to open up different reviews to search for titles. It wasn't a tedious process. In fact, I had fun rereading some of my posts.

Here is the shocking (to me anyway) thing I discovered: I wrote 90 reviews last year. 90. Whoa. If you had asked me how I did at reviewing books last year, I don't think I would have said I wrote that many reviews. Breaking the stats down---I read 150 books, 27 of them I didn't finish (Cybils books mostly). Since it is very unlikely I would not write a review for an unfinished book, I am going to back those out of my list. This leaves 123 books that were review-worthy. I reviewed 90 of them, leaving only 33 books I didn't review. That is 73% reviewed, to 27% not reviewed. Woot woot. I am even impressed myself.

I had set myself a reviewing plan for 2018 to take a little heat off the pressure the "need" to review all books. The plan was to write reviews for: a. ALL book club selections; b. any books I thought were potential Printz Award books (YA); and c. all YA/Junior nonfiction books. Other books could be reviewed but I didn't need to feel pressure if I decided to pass on them. Based on this plan I still have several reviews to write before I can close the door on 2018.

  • Book Club selections:
    • Before We Were Yours (for book club this month, but read in 2018)
    • An American Marriage
    • Educated
  • Possible Printz Award books:
    • Darius the Great is Not Okay
    • The Astonishing Color of After
  • JH/SH Nonfiction titles:
    • Forget it, too many and most I didn't finish. I did review all but three of the finalists, though, so I might go back and attempt reviews on those three.
  • Just because books:
    • The Soul of America
    • The Wisdom of Sundays
I know it isn't necessary but it helps me, so I am challenging myself to write these seven reviews by the end of the month and I'll keep track on a little counter. Today I start with The Soul of America since I've had the physical library book sitting here for weeks and I have to return it soon.

On non-bookish topics---
  • We finally got our health insurance switched over but it involves lots of hassles. Ugh. The good thing though, once all the hassles are dealt with it will save a ton of money each month, especially on prescriptions. In the meantime I still don't have a flu shot and I need to get one!
  • Bingley, our male puppy, has finally figured out how to lift his leg to pee, well, sort of. He still sprays his underside quite often which requires frequent little baths. I just got done bathing him so now I smell like pet shampoo.
  • Don and I are stuck in the middle of four TV series: Poldark (PBS); Outlander (Starz); Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (Prime); and Brooklyn Nine-Nine (Hulu). It takes work just remembering how to find them.
  • We've put away all of the indoor Christmas decorations from the main rooms, but the guest room is still a junk pile of decorations that need to be tucked away.  Out of sight, out of mind?
My goals for today:
  • Shower...ha-ha, I shouldn't even have to mention it. Guess who isn't dressed yet?
  • Drop by the library to pick up the books on hold
  • Read 100 pages of Beartown. Without daily page goals, I'll never finish the book.
  • Start review of The Soul of America
  • Drop by the guest room and survey the scope of the task at putting away the last of the Christmas decorations, maybe even put a few things away.
            • DOABLE!

5 comments:

  1. Wow! That's an impressive number of reviews if you ask me!

    I had to set daily page goals in order to get through Dune. I'm currently on page 256 of 794 and I'm reading approx. 60 pages per day.

    I loved Mrs. Maisel.

    Have a great day!

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  2. I totally get that you have put "shower" on the list :-) I remembered that you felt like you didn't write enough reviews, but you did very well! I have never done tags in Goodreads; maybe I should.

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  3. Very impressive number of reviews!! Get that flu shot, Anne! :)

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  4. I insist on reviewing all the books I read completely. It’s my record. But, my reviews aren’t very scholarly or in depth. I write them pretty quickly. And, when did TV viewing get so complicated? I actually miss the anticipation of waiting a week for the next episode. Binge watching just isn’t as much fun. But I find myself doing it!

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  5. I always have a backlog of year's reviews. I do that on purpose because I'm never sure what my reading schedule for the beginning of the new year is going to be. Work has gotten in the way of my reading so I only do chunks on the weekend.

    p.s. I love Poldark! What season are you on?

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