Reading Update – April 2022

19 Apr 2022 2 Comments

by Clare in Books Tags: , , , , , , ,

Sooo… my reading goals for 2022 are probably not very realistic, judging by my current progress. For my 2022 Goodreads reading challenge, I have set a goal to read 89 books. So far, I’ve finished 12 of them, putting me 14 books behind that pace.

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This graphic above shows those I’ve read. I’m not sure how I can read at any faster pace unless I quit my job, sleep even less than I do, or figure out how to bend time and space. I’m already listening to audiobooks to help make use of my otherwise useless driving time. At the end of the day, it isn’t truly about the numbers. It’s about the enjoyment of reading. But I agonize over my list of books and how there are so many that I feel like I will never get to, thus the attempt to set reading goals.

So what am I currently reading? I have started on Children of Dune by Frank Herbert but haven’t made it very far on this one yet. I’m about halfway through The Witch’s Heart by Genivieve Gornichec which I bought on a whim, and I’m a short way into Light by John M. Harrison in audiobook format for an upcoming book club discussion.

I’m enjoying Children of Dune and The Witch’s Heart but I’m struggling to get into Light. I haven’t found the characters very compelling and the futuristic cyperpunk-type of world is difficult to understand.

Coming up, the next few books on my to-be-read list are In a Garden Burning Gold by Rory Power (thanks to NetGalley), The Shadow Rising (Wheel of Time #4) by Robert Jordan, The Skull Throne (Demon Cycle #4) by Peter V. Brett, and Station Eleven (audiobook) by Emily St. John Mandel.

Hopefully I’ll get a review up by the end of the week for The Witch’s Heart. I have some travel planned and a 2-hour flight can help to create some uninterrupted reading time.

What are you reading? Have you read any of these books? What did you think? Let me know in the comments above.

Reading Goals for 2022

05 Jan 2022 Leave a comment

by Clare in Books Tags: , , , , , , ,

Looking ahead every year, it’s nice to set goals, right? I feel like I always want to be reading more, but it’s so hard to keep that to-be-read list under control.

For 2022, I have decided to let all self-control go in creating my books-to-be-read list. First I took all those books I had intended to read for 2021 but failed to get to and rolled them over to 2022. Then I added more books! I have a few series that I’m trying to finish so the list keeps growing. That leaves me with 89 books for 2022.

Can I actually read 89 books in a year? I don’t think I ever have. But why not try?

Here is the current list for 2022:

And here are the books I’m starting out the year with (already included in the list above):

How do you plan out your reading? What books are you most excited for in 2022? Let me know in the comments!

Books Read in 2021

04 Jan 2022 1 Comment

by Clare in Books Tags: , , , , , , ,

I had set myself a goal to read 50 books for 2021. And while I didn’t quite make that, ending up with 43 books read, I feel like I still accomplished a lot of my reading goals. As this graphic format always seems popular, here are the books I read in 2021:

Have you read any of these? What did you think?

For my favorites for the year, click over to this other post of mine.

Next up, I’ll take a look at what I’m planning to read for 2022.

Upcoming Books to Read

23 Jul 2021 Leave a comment

by Clare in Books, Updates Tags: , , , , , ,

We’re a bit past the halfway point of the year and I thought I’d stop to look at what I’m reading and hoping to read in the near future. I’m a bit behind where I wanted to be in terms of simple numbers, and my to-be-read list for 2021 has not shrunk at all as I add more books all the time. But here is what I’m currently reading or is in my upcoming pile:

Books I’m currently reading: A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine, Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro, and The Daylight War by Peter V. Brett. (Paid links help to support this blog.)

Books I put down but need to pick back up: Bone by Jeff Smith, Spark Joy by Marie Kondo. I am at least 75% of the way through Bone, but it’s just so long!

Upcoming audiobooks: The City of Brass by S. A. Chakraborty, Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus by Orson Scott Card, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson.

Other books I’m planning to read soon: Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir, Rocket Men by Robert Kurson, The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal, Dark Matter by Blake Crouch, A Blight of Blackwings by Kevin Hearne, Magical Midlife Madness by K. F. Breene, Shorefall by Robert Jackson Bennett, and Return to Earth by Buzz Aldrin.

And there are so many others!

How are you doing on your reading goals for the year? What books are you excited to read soon? Let me know in the comments.

To read some of my book reviews, look here.

How Do You Plan Your Reading?

08 Jan 2021 Leave a comment

by Clare in Books Tags: , , , , , , ,

Cover art

Well we’re a week into the new year and I haven’t finished reading any of the books that I’ve already started. If I truly intend to read 50 books for the year, that equates to about a book a week, so I’m already behind!

View of my monthly and yearly goals, and my January books.

I thought I’d take some time to think about how to organize my reading beyond my Goodreads to-be-read list for the year. One feature that I would really like to see on Goodreads would be an easy way to sort books within a shelf into a particular (reading) order. Now I know you can sort them, but it’s not user friendly at all and I gave up on that some time ago.

I’m trying out a new App that I just found called Read More, which you can find here. It still isn’t quite what I want, but it let me import all of my Goodreads books and shelves with the premium version. I can sort books by to-be-read month and then I can track how many pages or minutes I read each day. I can set a goal for the year as with Goodreads.

It looks like you can highlight sections of a book you are reading, although I think you either have to type in your own notes/text or can possibly scan a page of the book since you don’t actually use the App to read the books.

Highlight screen.

We’ll see if this helps me stay on track to finish some books I started quite a while ago. You can also set a deadline for each book and the App will tell you how many pages you should read per day to meet that goal.

How do you stay focused to meet your reading goals? Do you have a favorite App or technique that you use? Tell me about it in the comments.

Reading Plans for 2021

02 Jan 2021 2 Comments

by Clare in Books Tags: , , , , , , ,

I try to keep a list of books I want to read in the upcoming year on Goodreads. Inevitably, I go terribly off that initial plan, but here is what I at least see myself reading at this early point:

I set my 2021 goal at 50 books and there are already over 60 on this list. I imagine I’ll add more as my local book clubs make their selections and I find new releases that I can’t resist.

In the past, I’ve also set more detailed goals within that overall number, such as “read two non-fiction books” or “read two classics”. But most of the books on the list this time have just been rolled over from those I didn’t get to in 2020. Many are continuations of series that I have liked and keep trying to finish – Peter Brett’s Demon Cycle, The Earthsea books, etc.

Ultimately, I hop around a lot, grabbing whatever strikes my fancy that day. I also tend to read too many books at once which slows my pace and divides my focus. So maybe that’s something I should work on going forward – finish one book before I start the next? It’s so hard though when they’re all whispering READ ME urgently from their place on my shelves or the Kindle. I wish that Goodreads had a non-laborious way to sort the books on a shelf into a specific order, but I haven’t found that yet.

How do you decide what to read next? Are there any books that you are particularly looking forward to reading this year? Let me know in the comments!

Reading Summary 2020

30 Dec 2020 1 Comment

by Clare in Books Tags: , , , , ,

With all of the craziness of this year, I haven’t had time to keep up with my book reviews. However, I did want to at least post a year-end summary because I did get a lot of reading done – not as much as I would have liked, but still more than I have done in other years.

Here is my summary graphic taken from Goodreads:

That’s a total of 39 books, which is a bit short of my goal of 50, and down a little from 43 in 2019. Breaking the books down into genre and categories, here are some statistics (some overlap):

  • Non-fiction = 6
  • Classics = 1
  • Science fiction = 19
  • Fantasy = 13
  • Graphic novels = 1
  • Mainstream = 1
  • Romance = 3
  • Novellas = 2

Favorite books of 2020 (links help support this blog):

Least favorite books of 2020:

  • The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin
  • The Last Human by Zack Jordan
  • Master of Sorrows by Justin Call
  • Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi

Coming soon – books I’m hoping to read in 2021!

Goals – Do You Set Them?

07 Jan 2013 1 Comment

by Clare in Writing Tags: , ,

It’s a new year, and also a time at which many of us think about goals and accomplishments. This may be retrospective – thinking about your activities over the past year. Or if you look forward, then it’s more about making new goals for the future. It can also be both.

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For myself, I had several different goals that I had set for 2012. I’m not sure that I met any of them. BUT – I worked at these goals. For one example, I decided that I would participate in a 2012 reading challenge over at Goodreads. I set a goal of 50 books. I think I read 28. I blame George R.R. Martin and his long, long books for slowing me down on this one. But you know what? I still read a lot of books. More than I probably did for 2011. I’m trying it again in 2013 and I have a better idea of what it will take to read all 5o.

One of the larger goals that I had set was to write the first draft of a historical fantasy novel. I did manage to start much of the research, outline characters and some of the plot, and write a few chapters. I took a break from it, but instead of halting all my writing, I went back to short stories. I wrote at least eight of those through the year. So while I finished other tasks that weren’t my original goals, I still feel like I’m making progress on my writing.

I also try to constantly fling rejected stories back out to other potential markets. I had done pretty well with this in 2011, but mid-2012 I slacked off. My rejected stories would linger in my files for weeks before I would research the markets and send them off again. I regained my focus around August, and now I have two stories that have been accepted for publication and will be out in 2013.

So, as a writer, do you set goals for the upcoming year, next month, daily? Do you go back and assess how you did? What are your plans for 2013?

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