Tag: reading

My Reading History and My Goodreads Account

November 1, 2020 2 of 8

It’s funny. My handwriting is pretty bad and I get handwriting fatigue pretty easily (this is not a side effect of typing so much — I’ve been shaking my hand to help alleviate the fatigue since long before I ever touched a computer). And when we have multiple bottles of a script to fill at work, there’s a way to set the computer up so that it automatically prints out that number of labels, with “1 of x,” “2 of x,” etc.

There are a few medications that don’t generally have that turned on, like ibuprofen 800, because we don’t usually dispense an entire bottle. So, if I got, like, 180 tablets (we have — I got a script for 270 of them once), I would hand-write the sequence on them. Since my hands tire so easily, I write them “1/6,” “2/6,” etc. and do you know how long it took me before I had to resist the temptation to reduce those fractions?

Anyway, preparatory to using 240 of my 274 books in my Goodreads history as Gratuitous Amazon Links, I’m cleaning up my read dates. So many of those 274 books are things that I read before Goodreads, so I won’t be able to use that tactic on a bunch of them. And, since I’m working on a Nancy Drew reread project, I guess I will be able to try to sell you a copy of The Secret of the Old Clock.* It has a read date.

I guess I’m going to do some rereading, or try to remember which of these hundreds of books I read on or around their release dates and I can fake it. Or both. Probably both.

Also, I’m looking at some of these books and cringing because OMG, so they won’t be Gratuitous Amazon Links.

Oh, and it turns out that only 94 of those books have read dates, so I’ll be doing a lot of rereading and/or estimating. Eeek.

*Look! A not-so-gratuitous Amazon link! We’ll be seeing this again later this month, probably, when the pressure is on for me to post and I forget that I already posted this one.

Warmup Post NaNoWriMo 2020

11/1/20 1 of 8

I don’t know how long this is going to be. I’m not even sure what it’s going to be about. Maybe I’ll just ramble for a couple of hundred words and then post. I know that I’m normally up until, like 1 am or whatever most nights, but I’m already pretty punchy and will probably go to bed soon.

Do I need to do any laundry tonight? That’s a good question that I should research once I’m done with this.

I think that my first post once I’m actually, you know, awake should be a real introduction post like I did in 2015 when I started this blog and then once I finish it and polish it and whatever, I should take Facebook up on the credit that they’re always offering me to promote that post. And if there’s no offer like that now, I guess I’ll wait until there is an offer like that.

It kind of sucks that the first day of the first year in a long time that I’m really putting the effort in on NaNoWriMo I have to work. It’s a short-ish day, though, starting at 10 am and ending at 6 pm. I’ll have to throw together post 2 of 8 during breakfast. Unless I oversleep, in which case I’ll just have to punt.

I should probably try auditioning some more speech-to-text apps. Then I can write while I drive when I need to. I guess that would count as writing, right?

Ack! I just realized that if I’m going to write 240 posts, I need 240 photos and 240 Gratuitous Amazon Links. Maybe I can press my Goodreads account into service here. I’ve shelved 270 books and I’m still digging more out of my subconscious. Maybe I can post 240 of them in reverse chronological order by date written. Well, kind of a hybrid chronological order would be better, I guess. The book that I just finished last night was Keeper of the Lost Cities, by Shannon Messenger. The one before that was Tower of Nero, which relies on things learned in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians and the Heroes of Olympus and the first four Trials of Apollo books and skipping those would be counterproductive.

On the other hand, the posts aren’t going to be read in any particular order, so would it really matter which order I post the books in? I don’t know. It’s almost 12:30 am and I’m not thinking really well at the moment.

This would mean, of course, that the very oldest book I’ve ever read (right now the oldest books I have there are the first three Nancy Drew mysteries) would never be a Gratuitous Amazon Link this month.

Thinking of my Goodreads account, I just realized that I’m really far behind on updating them. I just took a break to update. And so now my Read shelf has 274 books on it and so now I have a bunch of Gratuitous Amazon Links lined up, but not anything like 240.

First up, the most recent book I’ve read, Keeper of the Lost Cities, by Shannon Messenger. It was published in 2012, and there are eight more books in the series so we’ll see how this goes. I really enjoyed this book and some not-quite-spoilery things I’ve read make me think that I might enjoy the rest of the series.

Maybe I’ll write about it later today for my first book blogging post for the month.

Now, let’s see how many words I’ve racked up so far.

Word tells me that it’s 592. That’s a respectable number. Not nearly enough for today, but enough before bedtime.

My Life as a Reader, Part 1 of Who-Knows-How-Many

I can’t wait to see how many parts this series ends up having.

I feel like I haven’t been doing enough reading lately. Then I realize that I read blog posts. I read comments to the blog posts. I read thinky articles linked in the comment to the blog posts. I read subreddits I read articles linked in the subreddits. I also am a member of Jenny Lawson’s Fantastic Strangelings Book Club, so I’m reading at least one book per month. I’m also about 3/4 of the way through one of the least gripping books I think I’ll ever have finished. Assuming I can make it that last 25%.

I’m also going back to reading National Geographics. Probably. I cracked open the latest issue that my dad has given me today, at least.

If I’m going to book-blog while I wait for my opportunity to travel to return, I figure that I should talk about my relationship with the written word.

I actually can’t remember a time when I couldn’t read. When the time came to help Alex learn to read, I asked my mom how she taught me to read and she said that, near as she could remember, I just picked up a book and read.

I remember that my mom signed me up for a children’s book club when I was little. It had books like One Kitten for Kim, and Andrew Henry’s Meadow, and Bear Circus. Bear Circus was published in 1971, so let’s say I was five or so.

Oh, and then there was The Mice Who Loved Words. I loved that book. I wonder what happened to all of those books. I hope my mom donated them to her library or something. It would make me happy to think of the kids of my now-underprivileged hometown reading the books that gave me so much pleasure when I was their age.

Then there was The Secret Garden. I often credit The Secret Garden as being the book that made me a reader. I was a bit young, I seem to recall that I was maybe eight* when my mom bought it for me. We went to the Kroch’s and Brentano’s at River Oaks in Calumet City and my mom bought something (I wasn’t really paying attention to what she was doing). She handed me a taped-shut white bag with “Kroch’s and Brentano’s” written all over it and told me that it contained one of her favorite books from when she was my age.

I opened the bag and there was the most daunting book I’d ever seen in my life. It had a few illustrations, but otherwise was just words. As I recall, I wasn’t expecting to be thrilled with it. But I opened the book and started to read.

Suddenly I found myself in India watching Mary, a lonely rich girl, lose everyone around her to cholera. I sat there as she was sent to live unhappily in the home of a clergyman in England, being teased by the children. Then she went to Yorkshire and things began to improve for her.

I fell in love. Both with reading and with the book. The family story, so I’m pretty sure it’s at least somewhat accurate, was that I was sitting in the back seat of the car when I finished The Secret Garden. I told my mom that I wished it hadn’t ended, so she said that I could read it again. I was silent for a long time so she turned around to see what was going on. She hadn’t intended for me to read it right away, but I had taken her literally. I had gone back to the beginning and was reading it again.

Now that I think of it, I’m not sure where my first comic book (Superman #280) fell in relation to The Secret Garden. I think The Secret Garden was not too long before the comic book, but I couldn’t swear to it.

As you can see, my Gratuitous Amazon Link is less gratuitous today. I’ve been doing a lot of Kindle books, what with COVID, but today I chose the paperback for one reason. The paperback has the same Tasha Tudor illustrations as my childhood version (which I reread until it literally fell apart) did. Maybe the illustrator of the Kindle version is amazing. I don’t know. I chose the illustrations I loved.

* I guess I might have been seven if it was before my first comic book.