This week’s Top Ten Tuesday prompt is for posts that give you the best glimpse of me. Let’s give it a shot…

1. Guilty Pleasures. To quote this post, “fuck that noise”. I don’t believe in ’em. I went all the way back to 2015 looking at my discussion posts, found this one, and agree with every word of it still. No such thing as a guilty pleasure.
2. Spoilers! Also an old post, and still true: I like spoilers. I have read all sorts of stuff about the later sections of Heaven Official’s Blessing, and it really adds to the experience for me.
3. Why reread? This is a topic that’s come up over and over again: I like to reread books I enjoy, and re-experience them. There’s another more recent post, and it’s not even the only one…
4. On giving up, but positively and Discussion: Putting the Joy Back Into It. Both of these are about reading/blogging habits I wanted to stop in order to stop feeling a sense of obligation around blogging. I can’t say I’ve always stuck to these resolutions, but it is something that’s important to me in reading and blogging: I’m not doing it as a job, I’m doing it for fun.
5. Discussion: Real Life. How much should you talk about your real life on your blog? I guess that depends on you, but I’m fairly open about mine (while keeping it mostly about the books).
6. Why haven’t you read ___ yet? And here you will learn that I’m contrary, and if everyone wants me to read something, I… probably won’t.
7. Review: Return of the Black Death: The World’s Greatest Serial Killer, by Susan Scott & Christopher J. Duncan. The book is arrant nonsense. My reaction to it is probably pretty telling about the kind of person I am.
8. Top Ten Tuesday: Reading Memories. This is a recent one — but what better way to know me than through my most salient memories of reading?
9. Top Ten Tuesday: Authors I’ve Read The Most By. You can know me by the books I love…
10. Top Ten Tuesday: Things I’d Have At My Bookish Party. My idea of a “party” is pretty telling, I think.

That was harder than I thought, because these days I mostly post reviews, Top Ten Tuesday, WWW Wednesday and Stacking the Shelves/Sunday Post. But I think you can still get a solid idea of who I am and who I’ve been!

Welcome to the Weekly Blogging Challenge blog hop, hosted by Long and Short Reviews. This week’s topic is “rereading books: why or why not?”.

The answer for me is that I do, of course — as I think most people around here have noticed, ahaha, since I always write a new review. I’m on my umpteenth review to write of Katherine Addison’s The Goblin Emperor. I have a whole list of reasons, so… let’s make it a list.

1. For fun. Reading should be fun. I find that I get easily focused away from that fact, and see it happening for other bloggers too. So if rereading a book sounds fun to you — if you’re like, gah, “I can’t remember the ending of XYZ and I really want to reread it” — my answer is pretty much always going to be “go for it!”
2. For comfort. Familiar literature can be a really different experience to a brand new book. You know what’s coming, so you’re not bracing yourself for the next awful thing that’s going to happen to beloved characters… at least not in the same way! You know what to expect, which makes it a much less daunting prospect when you have had an awful day.
3. Because it’s better the second time. Maybe that’s because it’s a really complex world and you were totally lost the first time; maybe it’s because the writing is really clever and when you read it the second time, you get to appreciate all the clues; maybe you notice different things, because you’re a different person between now and then.
4. To prepare for the next book in the series. I’m constantly having to go back to earlier books to remind myself what the heck’s going on.
5. To share the experience with someone else. I’ve had some great buddy reads where I’ve read the book before, but I also get to see someone experience it for the first time. Lots of fun.
6. Because it sticks in your head. I’m glad I reread Mira Grant’s Feed, and Marie Brennan’s A Natural History of Dragons, and Mary Robinette Kowal’s Shades of Milk and Honey, because… I didn’t like them that much the first time. But something in them stuck with me, and honestly, they’ve probably all gained two extra stars out of five — or even three — since I first read them. Some alchemy kept happening in my brain after I read them, and when I came back to them because they niggled at me, they opened right up and really worked for me.

I can honestly probably keep going and come up with more reasons. I know some people feel that there are so many books in the world, they can’t possibly justify rereading a book they’ve already read. But it’s not possible to read all the books in the world, even if you never reread even a single page, so if you can find enjoyment in rereading a book… why not?

(I know there are some people who can’t, who hate the predictability, and that’s cool too.)

Because I read a lot (once upon a time I managed 500 books in a year; now it’s more like 200), I frequently get asked what the trick is. People seem to think I have a lifehack or something that I can share with other people. I’ll break that down a bit more below, but here’s what I think (looking back) is the biggest driver for me meeting my reading goals…

I do best when I don’t care about the goals at all.

My reading has slowed down more and more with every goal I add, every challenge I decide I have to meet. It’s also slowed down because I’m an adult working 30 hours a week and studying and trying to be a healthy person with a tidy house — there’s no denying that. And the increased amount of non-fiction I read now is a factor as well. But there’s a fairly large correlation between when I started really worrying about meeting reading goals and when my reading speed abruptly dropped.

Now, I do have some habits which I think help me read a lot, so I’ll summarise them below:

1. Always have a book with you. You never know when you’re going to have a tedious hour stuck by the side of the road waiting for a bus or a towtruck. Or a 30-minute wait at an appointment. Even a five-minute wait for the train gives me time to fit in a chapter.
2. Pick up the book, not your phone (unless the book is on your phone). It goes without saying, really.
3. Give yourself at least a little room to read based on whims. Reading isn’t meant to be a chore. You don’t need a pre-planned TBR. If you’re really excited to read a book, you’ll remember it. You won’t be able to keep your hands off it.
4. Buy books you’re excited about. If it’s just a case of “I feel like I should read this”, that book is destined to moulder on the TBR pile forever. And my TBR pile is daunting as heck now because of exactly the wrong kinds of purchasing decisions.
5. Make the time. It’s been a shit day, but you can still turn some pages. And if you like reading and you’re reading a book you’re excited about, that’s only gonna make your day better.

That’s it. That’s my magic bullet. Everything else comes and goes, but these things are constant and always help toward meeting my goals.

Welp, here we are at the end of the year, and I don’t think I’ll be finishing another book before midnight. How’s it been? Well. I’ve read less than I have in a long time. I think I’ve enjoyed my reading more than maybe last year, when I was starting to feel painted into a corner with silly rules. I don’t know if I’ve fixed that, exactly, but I’m hoping I have.

Here are some neat figures from my organisational spreadsheet:

OTHER STATS:

Total read: 213
Number of rereads: 51 (24%)
Total page count: 62,991 (-10,090 from last year)
Most-read genre per month:

• January: History
• February: Science
• March: Science & History (tied)
• April: Fantasy
• May: Fantasy
• June: Fantasy
• July: Fantasy
• August: Fantasy
• September: Fantasy
• October: Mystery
• November: Mystery
• December: Romance

Number of ratings:

• Five stars: 17
• Four stars: 97
• Three stars: 66
• Two stars: 27
• One star: 6

First book read: The Bell at Sealey Head (Patricia A. McKillip)
Last book read: The Secret Casebook of Simon Feximal (K.J. Charles)
First book bought: A Murder Most Unladylike (Robin Stevens)
Last book bought: Sorting the Beef from the Bull (Nicola Temple & Richard Evershed)

Well folks, the time has come to talk of many things. Just up front: I’m not quitting blogging! Things just need to change, that’s all.

But let’s begin at the beginning, with the background: for the last year or two, or… no, let’s be honest, at least three or four years now, reading has started to feel like a bit of a chore. Not all the time, but more and more. When I do read, I enjoy it, but it’s become something I almost have to schedule time for. I’ve tried a couple of different things to make that better (Game of Books is one of them), but I think overall it’s become a bit too much of a boxticking activity. Every so often I get the urge to kick over the traces and ditch all my rules, and each time it’s resulted in a new set of rules and no net gain.

(Particularly because the average number of books I read in a year has fallen, despite all the lists, all the desperation to keep up with things!)

Balls to that, right? So, when was I happy with my reading last? I think in retrospect I’d put that at about the time I started leaving Goodreads, before I kept track of things with spreadsheets and before I started trying to keep some kind of regular blog schedule. (Actually, I pinned this solely to the spreadsheets, but the wife-creature kept poking me to think about what else might be in play.)

So, come the end of this year, I’m going to stop tracking my reading so obsessively. I don’t want to know how many books I’ve read this year. At the moment, my admirable wife is going to take over the tracking (and refuse to let me see it) so that at the end of the year, I can get a bunch of pretty graphs and pie charts to talk about my reading year with. That’s the plan for 2020, and if it doesn’t work out, well, maybe I won’t track my reading at all. I suspect I just need to get the numbers out of it, though; I was very happy when I was using Goodreads for it.

(I’d start now, but I need the spreadsheet to help me with my book blanket project, and I’m far too fond of that to let it go!)

I might also stop trying to track my progress vs my backlog. It’s never-ending, and it’s become about striking books off a list rather than enjoying them. We’ll see; it’s as the whim takes me.

More immediately, and more relevantly for you guys, I’m also going to stop scheduling my posts in advance. One of the things that was part of my routine on Goodreads was going to write a review as soon as I’d finished a book, and publishing it right away. That way I could share my feelings about the books I was reading more or less in real-time.

So, posts will no longer go live at 9:00am BST on the dot; reviews will be posted when I’ve finished a book, and that means there might be two posts on some days and then none for a week. When I get into obsessive mode and read five books in a row about influenza, there could be five reviews all in a row on books about influenza. So be it! I trust you’re all here for my reviews, in all their weird and wonderful variety, and not for a rigid posting schedule.

(For a few days or weeks I do have a backlog of reviews that haven’t been posted yet; I’ll publish those when there’s a day or two without other reviews, but once they’re gone, they’re gone. I do actually have a review for a book I finished today, but I’ll hold it just until morning so there aren’t too many posts on my blog, and more to the point in people’s notifications, in one day.)

I think I will still post a Weekly Roundup and What Are You Reading Wednesday, but I shan’t be obsessive about it either. Blogging isn’t my job — in fact, it has signally failed to produce any income at all on the occasions I’ve tried affiliate links and a donation button — and nor do I want it to be.

I’m trying to have no expectations about how this little project will go — maybe I will read less, not more! But hopefully I will be happier, and I’m sure you all want that for me!

A belated happy new year to all of you! 2018 was a heck of a year which saw me completing a degree (for the third time), moving in with my wife permanently in the UK, and getting a new job (jobs, even!). Perhaps not surprisingly, I’ve read less this year on an average books-per-day basis than ever since I started tracking. Last year I did some neat graphs using this site, so let’s go again! You can click each graph to see it larger; last year’s stats are here.

Other stats:

Total read: 245
Number of rereads: 45
Total page count: 73,891 (+17,005 from last year)
Most-read genre per month:

• January: Fantasy
• February: Fantasy
• March: History
• April: Fantasy
• May: SF & Fantasy (tied)
• June: Fantasy
• July: Fantasy
• August: Fantasy & Mystery (tied)
• September: Mystery
• October: Fantasy
• November: History
• December: Mystery

Number of ratings:

• Five stars: 21
• Four stars: 124
• Three stars: 75
• Two stars: 23
• One star: 2

First book read: The Unbelievable Gwenpool: Believe It (Christopher Hastings)
Last book read: Greenwitch (Susan Cooper)
First book bought: The Hidden People (Alison Littlewood)
Last book bought: The Golden Thread (Kasia St Clair)

So pretty much no surprises here, and only minor changes year-on-year. The biggest changes have been in my consumption of science non-fiction (down this year) and mysteries (up this year). I’ve done a little more rereading, and maybe a little more reading from my backlog. Game of Books and the number of books I read are actually more closely related to each other this year, but despite reading fewer books overall, I read way more pages this year. So, Game of Books has been a success!

Overall I read less this year, of course, but I can report that the value (mostly based either on what I paid for the book, or RRP) of the books I read was way in excess of what I actually spent on books this year, so I’ve been making good use of libraries and my backlog!

I’m a pretty unabashed lover of libraries. Free books! And so many of them! Okay, I sometimes have trouble finding the exact books I want, but I do get exposed to all kinds of books I might not otherwise have tried. And, well, having four different local library cards helps, too. If the most local library doesn’t have a book, the next one out just might (without having to figure out the individual library’s interlibrary loan system).

And it’s great, of course, to support librarians and prove to councils that people need and use libraries. Especially given the fact that I was on the committee of and volunteered at a community library — a noble endeavour and one that did a lot of good, but also made it obvious just how important funding and backup are in running an effective and useful library. Energetic volunteers aren’t really a replacement for money, and community-led libraries are limited (though better than nothing, by a long long way!).

On the other hand, I have an entire shelf of library books, menacing me slightly with their due dates and sheer profusion. The problem with libraries is that they tempt me to bite off more than I can chew, and unlike the books I own, they don’t wait patiently. So currently I’m in the process of whittling down the number of library books hanging out on my shelves. It’s going slowly… I’m on about 30 left, though, from 60ish to begin with, so I guess I’m doing okay.

Thank goodness libraries let you renew loans…

All the same, it’s important to remember that libraries are pretty great. Librarians, you have my love!