WOW! It is the second
day of 2015 already! And I am into the
second book of 2015 toward my goal of 500 books "read" this year.
According to my list, I was well over that in 2015, but when
I found out about the GoodReads Challenge toward the end of December, and I
decided to list the books I'd "read" in 2014 -- I discovered 2
things:
a) Goodreads does
not allow multiple readings of the same book to count toward the count; only one read per book counts;
b) I had, around
September, stopped being careful to "reuse" numbers of book that I
had started and paused for whatever reason and failed to complete. So right now, the count in my list is not
accurate. I intend to go back and remedy
that soon so I can give an "accurate" counting.
How did I end the year with so many books?
a) AUDIOBOOKS! I don't use TV as a diversion -- cancelled satellite
TV a number of years ago and because of where the TV and VCR/DVD player are, it
is not convenient to use DVDs. The disk
player of my laptop is incredibly finicky and unless a disk is pristine new, it
rarely plays well ... so, AUDIOBOOKS.
Why not radio? Radio through the
radio just doesn't work well where I live -- the local station just isn't
powerful enough to reach the 8 miles (driving distance -- less, as the crow,
canadian goose or sandhill crane fly) from their studios to my house on the
hill -- I'm not sure where their tower is, though ... and internet radio just
doesn't interest me. And my internet
browser of choice doesn't work with most players, it is too old. That is, I am using Firefox 12 and they recently
released version 33 or 34 ... and every update ifs not an update but almost a
totally new version that is no longer compatible with the majority of add-ons I
use to make my computer use actually useful to me instead of the myriad of
advertisers and marketers who want to control my internet experience.
b) CHILDREN'S
BOOKS! I love books for all ages but
relish children's books, especially beautifully illustrated picture books. Two years ago, I got interested in them for a
proposed series of posts for the month-long A-to-Z posting challenge. I did not keep up with the challenge but got
about 50+ A-to-Z picture books from the library to investigate. I was amazed by the artwork, the texts, and
how much picture books have changed through the years. Last year, 2014, I spent some time with a
series of picture books based on the Cinderella tale and discovered a huge
variety of tales from around the world and fanciful retellings of the tale (for
instance, one was a Bigfoot version). I
asked my husband for ideas for this year's journey into children's books and he
suggested Richard Scarry -- illustrator of many of the books we grew up
with. So, I will see what I can find --
is his work still available even? And
then other illustrators rather than the tales, at first, will be my picture
book foray in 2015. :-) Children's books are short and easily
"bulk" out my count of books (mua ha ha ha ha ha!) ...
A quick note about Amazon and me -->
Back when there was that huge disagreement in 2014 over
Amazon not selling books from certain publishers because of pricing disputes, I
decided I did not like Amazon and looked for different online sources of books
with "affiliate" programs. I
found Powell's and Abes. Turns out that
Abes is an Amazon company. Audible is an
Amazon company (one I need to continue using because they are, right now, the
only source of audiobooks that I know of).
GoodReads is an Amazon company.
And, Shelfari is an Amazon company.
**SIGH**
I used to use Shelfari but did not keep up with is. I tried to log in without opening a new
account but the "forgot your password" email hint never showed up, so
I decided against opening a new account there.
I've had a GoodReads account for s while but rarely used it until I saw
about the 2014 Reading Challenge (in December 2014) and tried to get all my
2014 reads on a shelf there -- which I did, but it is not as easy to use as I
would like and when working on a long list, I found it tedious to input all the
info. So I put in all the titles,
intending to go back and edit each one to the correct version and add in the
"date read" info ... slow going.
So, I have some info on a variety of "goal
tracking" widgets that I may or may not adopt to track how many books I do
read this year. We'll see. But hopefully I will be more regular in my
posts here as I read (understand that to usually mean "listen to")
books in 2015.
And the first book for 2015 is (drum roll, please) "ta dah":
The Amazing Maurice
and His Educated Rodents
