Tag: reading

Reading challenge 2019

I think I forgot to tell you guys about my Goodreads reading challenge for last year, 2019.

Gr image

A small sample is shown here. And in reverse order. [^^] But it gives you nothing more than the basics.

In previous years, I wanted a bit more information about what I was reading, and I found a spreadsheet from the Smart Bitches trashy Books website. [%%]

sbtb graph 1

My total is really 403 titles. Goodreads has deleted something off and I cannot for the life of me work out what it was; not without going through all the records. Aint nobody got time for that.

So 81,110 pages read. A lot of smaller titles. I was making my way through a pile of Agatha Christie stories but still managed one title over 800 pages and I read at a rate of 220 pages per day.

Being a romance centric website, the sheet is very well… romance centric. These are the categories.

sbtb graph 2

This surprises me; I did not know I read that much fantasy and sci-fi.

sbtb graph 3

I am parsimonious with my five star ratings. I do not give them to everything, clearly that would be for the fourth star – lol. But that is a pretty decent bell curve. I also tend to dnf rather than one star something.

sbtb graph 4

This is interesting, because as is often the case, what gets measured gets noticed. I thought I would do better than this at picking diverse books and marginalized authors. I will try harder in 2020.

This year I have also split fantasy and sci-fi into two categories – once I’d worked out how to edit the spreadsheet. There are instructions on how to do that in this year’s sheet update. Dammit – I did it on my own, and added in a missing line and changing the 2019 sheet to 2020. I was super proud of myself for that.

I have set this year’s target at the same, one book per day. So far I am up to 71.

 

Links:

^^ My goodreads challenge for 2019

https://www.goodreads.com/user_challenges/14604195

%% smart bitches reading spreadsheet

https://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/2020/01/track-your-2020-reading-with-this-nifty-spreadsheet/

Tracking your Reading with a Spreadsheet

I do love a good stats sheet

I was reading Smart Bitches Trashy Books, and they had a 2019 update for a spreadsheet to track your reading. Now I use Goodreads to record my reviews and keep track of stuff I own or want to read. I also keep my reviews in a Scrivener file I recently amended to include meta-data for male or female authors but it doesn’t have the extras that this one does. So, I downloaded it and gave it a go.

After a month’s worth of entries I have a better idea of whether it will work.

Specifically, I wanted to record diverse authors and book characters; this sheet has it in a pie chart. *squees*

Look at that, isn’t it pretty?

january book stats

I have assumed that having goblins and giants in your story doesn’t technically count as ‘diverse’ characters. I mean if they are goblins of colour [wait… what colour are goblins? never mind…] If they are gay or queer or trans then I count them. And they have to be more than just a token character. That’s how I intend to use it, your usage may differ.

Download it at the link below if you are interested.

Happy reading.

 

links:

smart bitches trashy books

 

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.