Tag: books

My version of the trolley problem

Reusing books is a trendy thing at the moment, but it makes me freak out a little; they are destroying a book! I know maybe nobody wants that book, it might be damaged or old, and the new product might be art, or something useful… but aaargh. It just feels wrong.

One of my book suppliers is the lifeline charity sale where they sell titles for one or two dollars each. I take along my wheeled shopping trolley like a proper book granny. The other source is the sale trolley at the library; three books for a dollar. Bargain. And already covered in plastic and labelled with the genre. Bonus.

I think of it as my own version of the trolley problem; it can be summarised as ‘too many books, so few hands’ to carry them.

Recently, I have understood that part of who I am is using those hands to make things. Often textile things: sew, knit, crochet, cross stitch, patchwork, quilt, weave, spin, and embroider … you ask, I’ve probably given it a go.

When I lived in Indonesia it was a little harder to do that kind of work given the tropical weather. And who needs knitted jumpers when it’s 32C every single day?

So I side stepped into doing paperwork and scrapbooking. As a child I used to do calligraphy and water colour. I can remember being given a hardback copy of Edith Holden’s Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady. $$

And it was life changing. Her scrapbook filled with little sketches in the corner and twee little stories about going for a walk and seeing a robin or whatever. I desperately tried to replicate it, but to no avail. I’m blaming my childhood – what were my diary entries? I read a book, walked to the railway station to catch a train to school, fought with my brother – riveting stuff.

Ooh maybe I just wanted to BE an Edwardian lady of leisure? [looks at current life – huh]

But I digress, so not only do I have a pile of scissors and paper from scrapbooking, but I also have a store of paints, coloured inks and pen nibs, and a vague idea of how to use them. I used to write out book quotes I liked or poems on A3 sheets of art paper purloined from my mother’s classroom, and I’d give them to my friends as gifts. [I was such a weird kid.]

I often say the internet is a journey of a thousand clicks and one of those clicks led me to a Pinterest page for re-using hardback books. There seems to be two options: as a common place book where you write on the original page after modge podging it to white death, or if you cut out all the actual print pages, as a folder to hold books you tie inside, or if you are really natty, you stitch your hand made pages into the empty book case with some simple book stitching methods. [stitching? NO, brain!]

And it just resurrected all that Edith Holden love.

So at my yoga class, instead of lying in my meditation pose and clearing my brain, I am planning how I could make one of these. And sorting through my paper stash, trying to remember what rubber stamps I have. Do I have some old green ink? Maybe… what stickers could go with it? Wait up; I used to order themed sets each month from some lady in Queensland, where did I put those?

I guess it was relaxing. I can hear Andy Puddicombe from Headspace reciting patiently, ‘if the brain wanders off just bring it back again.’]

*crash tackles brain, head locks it, drags it back to the yoga mat*

But this also sets my brain up for a WAR.

Books. I adore books. I hold them to my chest with love and adoration. In one of the Pinterest ‘how to articles’, a woman used a copy of a hard back book titled Katherine. I noticed the Catherine wheels on the cover in a coat of arms. The coat of arms John of Gaunt had made for a common woman because he loved her so much. [Have I read it? oh yes… many times]

It’s old, the woman in the post says, printed in 1954.

What??? I run off to Goodreads. The title was released in 1954. Dear God, is she chopping up a first edition of Anya Seton’s Katherine???! Eeek!

Hyperventilates – oh no, that poor book, this is a tragedy. It could be worth a fortune.

Calm down, brain. One, it’s done. You can’t rescue it. Two, is it even worth anything? [No, do NOT go look that up] Seton probably had a huge first print run, she was such a popular author … breathe…

So, if you can, imagine how I will react to cutting up an actual book with my own two hands? [It is not going to be pretty.]

The train of thought goes like this: I will get a book that nobody wants, from the charity store, or the library. ah ha?! I shall raid the sale trolley.

Quick walk to the library. I find a few hardcover options of a certain size, and for my one dollar I end up with a copy of Saladin Ahmed’s Crescent Moon [to READ – as if I’d chop that up?], a Christopher Ondaatje novel The Last Colonial [I had a flashback to an English lady in Jakarta insulting me by calling me a colonial – hisses – it also has these creepy weird illustrations so it might be okay to cut up?] and a Time Life tome on Russian history in the time of War and Peace.

The colonial book is rare according to Goodreads… sighs… dammit.

But I feel quite at ease chopping up a Time Life book. I shall cover the eyes of all the Time Life art books on my shelves so they don’t witness the murder.

Maybe I should just ask the library if they are throwing any reference books out. And then I could bury the book harm vibes more easily? I got it out of the trash.

But that would mean another walk to the library… oh no.

I shall try to stay away from the sale trolley.

 

 

Links:

$$ Edith Holden’s country Diary of an Edwardian Lady

https://www.amazon.com/Country-Diary-Edwardian-Lady/dp/1586631152

Not lost, just misplaced books

I saw some Twitter people get upset with Marie Kondo when she recommended people give away books. Most people just over reacted. She’s about keeping what brings you joy, and for me, it’s books.

I am definitely in the ‘keep them forever’ camp. I have dragged them to fifty different addresses and even to other countries. If I’ve read them, they stay; I may want to read them again.

So my house is a little bit crowded with bookcases. I have six in my bedroom alone. Kid Extra caught me measuring in the hallway to just squeeze one more in. If I had a design style it would maximal rather than minimal && but every item has a memory or a story attached to it, and they bring me joy. Moving house? Not so much.

But I digress. I have been trying to catch up on Tim Clare’s podcasts. [So many podcasts, so little time] I was up to the episode where he talks to Lauren Groff.

Tim was utterly fangirling; it was kind of adorable. I looked her up to see if my local library have any of her works, and they do. She was on the Obama reading list and those books often make it to Australian shelves. And then I realised that *I* had one of her titles. The Monsters of Templeton. Ooh nice – but where is it? Buggered if I know.

I made an extra bookshelf on my Goodreads page for ebooks. My shelf names are pretty boring: did not finish, borrowed, ebook etc. Other members get far more imaginative. So if it isn’t an ebook, then it’s a physical book and it must be in my house somewhere but I have no recollection of where.

I buy a lot of books at the charity store sales where they are sold at one or two dollars each, so it’s easy to lose track when you are shelving a few at a time.

The cover on Goodreads does NOT look familiar, I don’t even remember the cover – it could be an odd Aussie cover change. For some reason we often get different cover treatments.

sighs.

Maybe it’s time to reorder them all? I shelve by size – trade paperbacks are the bane of my life – they’re so big. I can squeeze two extra shelves into an Ikea Billy bookcase with mass market paperbacks. Should I go Dewey? Alphabetical? I do try to put one author’s work together but that gets hard with people like Neil Gaiman with everything from trade paperback, to children’s books, to huge coffee table book size comics.

Sighs again. It looks like I’m going to need more shelves.

Woot! Found it.

Links:

&& yes, there is a maximalism design style. It kind of looks like Howl’s bedroom from Howl’s moving Castle.

Death Of 1000 Cuts – Season 2 Episode 31 – Chatting with Lauren Groff.

 

 

My reading in 2018

gr 2018

500 titles – total of 97,333 pages with an average length of 194 pages.

Bear in mind that doesn’t include pages for audiobooks. A few people don’t put in the number of pages when they post a title to Goodreads so often they show up as a zero, too. It can only use the data it was given.

I keep my own count of my star ratings as I post the reviews. I am not overgenerous. I can’t see the point of giving every book five stars, but it looks like I give 40% 4 stars. I will mark up for diversity; call it positive discrimination if you will. We need to push the balance until it comes naturally.

5 stars: 87

4 stars: 203

3 stars: 89

2 stars: 61

1 star: 21

dnf: 39

total: 500

I think I need to read less male authors, and more diverse authors but I don’t know the stats for that. Maybe I can count that, too? It is easier to do it as I go so I’ll try that and see. I went off and added those to my Scrivener keywords. I write and store GR reviews in Scrivener and it has meta data functions that I still underuse. That’s the issue with Scrivener; I always feel as if I am paddling in the shallow end with everything it can do. And yes, I’ve done courses. [sheesh as IF I’d miss an opportunity to do a course. *laughs at self*]

And I’ve hit my first snag with book one for 2019. Ilona Andrews is a husband and wife writing team that uses her name. *shrugs* close enough. Sorry, Gordon you now have a pink tag.

I also use a keyword to remind myself where the book is. Is it a physical book? On Kindle? Kobo? A pdf from the author? A free online read? This saves me time when I’m looking for it later. There’s no point looking for a book on my shelf if it was a library borrow. A super quick summary or note that reminds me what it’s about and if it is part of a series.

So my corkboard view with the colour-coded meta data looks like this:

scrivener note cards GR

In 2018 I tried to put things in my ‘currently reading’ file to make me read them. It didn’t work. I have things in there that have been there all year so I am taking them out again. There’s no point guilting myself into more guilt, if that makes sense. Things change. Moods change. I’m reading for pleasure and education, not work, so nothing has a deadline unless it’s a library book. Maybe at another time I’ll get into them. That’s fairer on the books, too.

So task one is clean up my ‘currently reading’ list.

Done… woot that was easy.

If I have another aim for 2019 reading it’s read the books I paid for. I keep buying Humble Bundles and forgetting I own them. They also show up on my Kindle App on my PC but not on my phone where I often read them. This is probably a knowledge issue of mine and may be fixed by simply buying a Kindle reader and learning how to import files. I don’t think I can use the app on a tablet or laptop as it relies on things imported into it on here. To explain, I save a mobi file from a book bundle onto my hard drive, click open and it automatically puts it into the Amazon App. It also doesn’t show up as bought by me in Amazon. Another reason to check Goodreads before I buy anything.

To the research, she shouts.

For 2019 I set my goal at 365.

links:

Goodreads user year

 

yes, I’m ranting about book prices again

Some days Amazon’s different sites save me from myself.

I subscribe to a lot of bookish websites, some of which let you know when one of their favourites is on sale. Often, I run off – all eager to purchase – to get hit by the usual Australia problem.

Oh, you live in Australia… nope. It’s not on special for YOU. The price is not 99c it’s $8.

And I don’t buy it.

This must be how Hawaiians feel with the ‘continental US’ limitation on postage.

*Shrugs*

I will admit this week I had a few real life smacks and to cheer myself up I fully intended to buy a book. [Like I don’t somehow get books every day. Shush, brain.]

Ilona Andrews has recently finished their Kate Daniels series. I desperately want to read it but I have all the series in the same format; mass market paperback. I check my local library and they don’t have any of the books. So off I dash to check the price of the ebook.

I rationalise that I will get a physical copy at some point, but the ebook will get me through until then.

$18.99

What? For an ebook? [I have raged about Australian book prices before…]

That is just too much for me, so I go to check when the paperback will be released. I may get a short dose of happy book buying feelings if I can buy a pre-order.

No release date, yet. This seems like a deliberate decision by the publishers to milk fans of the series. Previously I’ve pre-ordered the paperback no problem. You can’t tell me they don’t know when it will be released. In fact, I just got a notice that a pre-order for their Hidden Legacy series is on its way.

*grits teeth*

What if I just got a hardback? [Let’s ignore, for the moment, the way it will make me crazy for decades to have ONE book a significantly different size in a series of ten. I neeeeds it, precious…]

$45 at my local bookshop.

Are you freaking kidding me?

Now this isn’t a swipe at Ilona Andrews. This is a traditionally published book and the author doesn’t set the price, but man… I live in a country where most of the wildlife can kill, don’t add book prices to the list of things that can wound me.

 

Goodreads reading challenge

2018 gr

I set a target of a book a day. That seemed reasonable. Last year I ended up reading 425 for the year, so I still have *checks notes* 105 days of the year left. [as IF I’m not going to read any more books?!]

They are a number of genres and a mixture of formats. Shorts stories, long novels, radio plays, audiobooks, library borrows of all types, and physical books. I am a sucker for the Lifeline charity books sales. Heck at $1 a book, I’ll try anything that catches my eye.

And my ratings are spread, too.

5 stars: 64 18%
4 stars: 141 39%
3 stars: 66 18%
2 stars: 47 13%
1 star: 18 5%
dnf: 29 8%
total 365  

 

This is the first year that I’ve been keeping records of my ratings as I go, so I can’t compare it with last year’s percentages. I won’t give everything five stars, that’d be a pointless waste of time, but I’m pretty generous with 40% getting 4 stars.

But how am I going with the boxed sets, I hear you ask. I’ve read 60 boxes of… mumbles… 263.

Sighs

I know one thing: I’m going to be way more ruthless in the future. If I’ve tried two books and they’re both bad, I’m deleting any other titles I have from the same author.

So many books, so little time.

Boxed sets

Hi, my name is AMG and I’m addicted to boxed sets.

Hi, AMG. *bored AA response voice*

I adore a bargain.

My brain sees a box of books as a better deal than a single title. I think… maybe they could be good? Honestly, I don’t get how my own brain works some days.

I’ve bought box sets for one title. Or one author. Or just because they seem like a good deal.

So, my kindle is full of them. I’ll admit there are some dodgy ones. Bad writing, bad formatting, bad covers… no hot linked table of contents. Believe me, that is a sin of the first order.

They aren’t easy things to organise as an author in the Amazon world. The reader might pay 99cents for their six, eight, ten books but Amazon cannot credit multiple authors separately for their share of that 99cents.

So, one author has to take responsibility for the payment and the distribution of that royalty earning and that has historically not gone well.

It can get ugly fast. There have been disastrous boxed sets that kept breaking the Amazon 5,000 page limit. There have been attempts to milk the Kindle Unlimited page read count with overlarge titles. And there have been copyright issues once a box is published with another author’s name on it.

But for me, the ugliest thing has been my inability to know what I own. I kept buying books I already owned. This is the opposite of a bargain.

So, I ‘tidied’ up my Scrivener Goodreads file. I made a folder for boxed sets and I added in every single boxed set I owned; with a separate scrivener link to the actual review when I read each title. I review each title separately. [Why should a good book get sucked down for being in a bad boxed set?]

They are metadata marked as amazon, kobo, audible, library and so on… it’s super easy to search scrivener; easier than the kindle app. And I counted how many in each set I had read, and marked the completed sets as ‘read’.

Bless me, I got ORGANISED.

It took me days.

You want to know how many… right?

238 boxed sets.

*face plants into keyboard*

It’ll take me years to read ‘em.

YEARS.

*stares straight into the camera*

Bring it.

Procrastination

For once, my innate ability to procrastinate has paid off. Count them… one.

I subscribe to Audible – the audiobook arm of Amazon. Each month I pay for a credit that entitles me to purchase one book. Sensibly, I try to make it a big book, or a boxed set, or something that seems like value for money. I won’t use it to buy a book that costs less than the credit did, that’d be dumb. I also won’t use it to get the audiobook of a title that I already own in eBook form. Also dumb, as the website automatically links with my Amazon account and offers the audiobook for the low price of $2.99 if it’s already in my library. I’m not sure how long they’ll keep doing that, it seems like a loss leader to me.

For instance, Anna Karenina is a free eBook; it’s old and out of copyright. The audio production is brilliantly read by Maggie Gyllenhaal. I expect she got paid a lot for that. But as I own the free eBook it cost me less than five dollars to hear Maggie’s breathy voice read to me. I think. Honestly I forget the price.

It’s a neat way to read those classics we all put off.

At any rate, for months, I hadn’t taken the time to trawl through my wishlist and I was busy listening to free audiobooks borrowed from my local library via the online app.

Audible had a promo; buy three books and they’d give you a $20 credit.

Oh now…

I check the fine print: or spend three credits.

I just so happen to have three credits. I’m in. I spent the credits on boxed sets and I used the voucher to buy all the library matches.

Seven audiobooks for twenty bucks? Bargain.

My 2017 in reading

And listening – yes, I count audiobooks as books; who doesn’t?

I did aim for a book a day. I read 424 for the year but my stats break down like this:

Rating number
5 stars  – amazing 58
4 stars – really liked it 156
3 stars – liked it 96
2 stars – it was okay 61
1 star- did not like it 18
Did not finish 35
total 424

 

If you take out the dnf’s then I still make a total of 389, so I count that as above my target of 365. I have a giant Scrivener file that holds all my reviews. I even have a separate folder for boxed sets. I try to keep track of whether I’ve finished a whole box set. I have an estimated 180 of them. I also count a humble bundle as a ‘set’.

My cute Goodreads graphic looks like this:

gr 2017

… but it’s wrong.

Sherlock Holmes: The Definitive Collection of four novels and five short story collections – which I counted as ONE book – had 2,435 pages. And it clearly hasn’t counted it. I feel cheated.

If I had less works, I’d check the page total as well, but I can’t be bothered. And it counts audiobooks as none or single figures. See Charles Paris on the 1 page side? That book has 196 pages, but it’s been turned into a radio play and who knows how many pages that becomes after editing. More than one, at any rate. Plus, I read a few epic fantasy and they are always bigger than a thousand pages.

Goodreads, you are flawed.

It averages out at 182 pages per title. *shrugs*

I suppose it works out, as I do break boxed sets up into single titles, so that I can review each one. It’s hard to give a mark to a set that has varied works in it. Do you average them? That seems unfair to the good titles. You see my problem.

This year, I discovered library audio and ebook borrowing. Very dangerous indeed.

For 2018 I’ve set the target as 365 again.

Book piracy

Ages ago I set up some google alerts and then promptly forgot about them.

So imagine my surprise when this month one pings into my inbox with the notification that my works are on another website. I go look and it’s one of those pirate ebook websites.

My short story is printed in its entirety; including my copyright.

It’s one of the free ones, so they aren’t stealing from me. And in any case after years of listening to other authors, there’s not a lot you can do about these pirate sites. They work, and exist, just to collect people’s credit card details. If someone is silly enough to give their details to one of these dodgy sites rather than pay for works from legit sites, that’s their issue, not mine.

Read. Enjoy. All I can hope is that I may gain a fan or three from it.

Sorting out my values

I was reading Mark McGuinness Motivation for Creative People and for once, I was doing my homework.

He suggests writing down your values; the things that drive you. He gave a short list for you to sort from highest to lowest, then added in dozens more. A few of the original list values didn’t make it onto my second list.

It ended up being this in no particular order:

  • Knowledge
  • Creativity
  • Justice
  • Diversity
  • Generosity
  • Prosperity
  • Discipline
  • Courage
  • Integrity
  • Professionalism

Huh. Interesting. Some of these surprise ME.

Why did I choose these?

  • Knowledge defeats the darkness of ignorance
  • Creativity brings joy to myself and to others – painting, plays, opera, stories – even arranging a garden or a house is creative
  • Justice is vital to the world – without it we fall into the dark places
  • Diversity IS the world; why ignore it?
  • Generosity – again – without it – we let others down.
  • Prosperity – is good for us all – the true trickle down.
  • Discipline – without it you don’t get much done.
  • Courage – taking the first step may be the hardest part, but it’s not easy to keep walking.
  • Integrity ties into being able to trust and believe people and it also means being whole and undivided
  • Done is better than perfect but it sure helps if it’s done well.

So perhaps I should make one of my goals giving away a part of whatever I earn from my writing? It seems to be a much stronger value to me than even I realised.

Links:

Mark McGuinness

Motivation for Creative people