#blog12daysxmas Day 10 Reading Challenge 2012

As in 2010 and in 2011, in 2012 I set myself the challenge of reading 52 books.  This challenge was set in Goodreads and monitored in their Challenge section and in my read-2012 shelf.  This was the cause of some confusion for a while as there were discrepancies.  It took me a while to realize that the reason for that was my rereads.  If I reread a title and marked it as read in the Goodreads app, it didn't go down as part of my challenge reading as the original reading date stood.  I realized that I could go into the website and manually change it but that was too much like work. Ultimately I decided to go with the items in my read-2012 shelf (once I had moved a few unfinished ones to the new read-2013 shelf).

The other bit that was decidedly like work and one of the causes for delay in posting this account was that at the end of 2012 I had outstanding three read books which were not on Goodreads and which I had to catalogue manually, download an image etc.  I finally did that this morning.  So....

DRUMROLL!

I certainly met my 2012 challenge of reading 52 books.  I documented on Goodreads a total of 70 books as having been read in 2012.  Of these 18 were non-fiction: cooking, travel, biography and history. And the remaining 62, not surprisingly were fiction, predominantly crime fiction and crime fiction written by women.  During the year as in other years I reread books, this year focusing on Ngaio Marsh (though I didn't read her complete oeuvre), and, triggered by the Miss Phryne Fisher TV series, on Kerry Greenwood whose Phryne series and Corinna series I reread.  The others were new or recent publications such as those by Carolyn Morwood and Sulari Gentill.

 

So I am happy with this. I am amazed at people who can read 366 books but I don't want to emulate that.  I read for enjoyment and, if it starts being a race, I will stop enjoying it.  I predominantly use Goodreads to document my reading through the year and know that there are times such as when blobbing through heatwaves or when I am laid low in my sickbed that I binge-read and also that there are other times when I am so busy with other stuff that little book reading gets done. So be it.

So 2013 is ahead of me and I have again set myself the challenge of 52 books for the year.  I am already up to 5 books on the 9 January 2013 and it will be 6 shortly.  January heatwave binge mode is the reason and no doubt the numbers will drop off after the weather changes.

#blog12daysxmas Day 7 Reflections on #2011PAD

For the last twelve months I have been participating in the Flickr group #2011PAD. We all posted a photograph every day (or some times in batches when we forgot or didn't have time). I really enjoyed myself doing it and felt I was just really getting into the swing of it. A little while ago I posted my last photo for 2011 and feel quite sad about it. However, the future is going to bring a new group Friday Photos 2012 and I am already starting to be quite excited about that.

I decided today for my reading blog to review what impact my reading had on my #2011PAD. I must confess that I was pretty amazed to discover that there were not more photos of books!



I always think that books are so integral to my life that I expected them to be an overwhelming theme. But if I leave out photos that have to do with libraries (with books on shelves in them) or things like Sisters in Crime events, how many actual photos did I take of books I was reading?




I only had ELEVEN photos out of 365 of books I was reading! I really must lead a more balanced life than I often feel I do. And what were the eleven books? Do I feel that they actually reflect my reading habits?




Non-fiction and fiction are both represented. One photo showed both: a book on Itouch and an Agatha Christie, perhaps summing up two main threads of my interest. Maybe I should have included photos of my iTouch (none in the 365 2011PAD) or my iPad representing ebooks as they should be represented.

Apart from the Agatha Christie, other fiction was all crime - Elizabeth Peters, Kerry Greenwood, Tess Gerritson, Jeffrey Siger and Elizabeth Peters again with a lone but fabulous Kate Grenville. Yes, this is probably a fair representation of my fiction reading I must say: crime with a bit of historical and Greece and Egypt thrown in for fair measure.

And the three non-fiction titles apart from the book on the iTouch? Two focus on local and family history and the other is a biography of one of my all time favourite writers who wrote primarily historical and crime fiction. Yes - I can live with that as a microcosm of my non-fiction reading.

A new challenge for 2010!

One of the challenges I have found over the last decade is keeping up with current reading - of books. Whereas once I really prided myself on my book knowledge now it is really not very good. Once when an event like the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards came up, I would have read all the short-listed books and had very clear views about them. Nowadays, whilst I retain my interest in books, writing, publishing and book-selling sufficiently to get me along to the PremLit Awards, I'm really pushing my luck to have read one of the short-listed titles.

There are a range of reasons that this has happened to me and exploring that could take a whole book in itself. One of the reasons is the way I source most of my information online and constantly read bites of information. I love things like Twitter and Facebook and the way one can keep so up to date. But I do still read books. I always have a couple of books on the go, but often they are comfortable old favorites. Maybe I read more than I think I do and there is just so much one can read.

So with 2010 starting I have decided to document my reading of books. I am setting myself the target for 2010 to read 52 books. I don't care if they are fiction, non-fiction, dearly loved old favorites or cutting edge just-off-the-press items. Reading books has always been pivotal to my life and I am really curious to know how many I read. Will it be easy to get to 52 or will it be a struggle? How many books do I actually read in a year? How will I change my habits to try to keep more up to date with what is being published?

It is now 7 January and I have read a few books already as I've been on leave. I'll write about them shortly now that I have got around to setting up this blog. In the meanwhile, I've been experimenting with Evernote and noting down the titles there so I won't forget them! Always a geek librarian but proud of it!!