The slippery slope of trying to read current: 03/23/19

For the last two years I've made the effort to read and review one newly published book each week. That means a commitment of fifty-two reviews of newly published books and the other 313 review slots left open for backlog books.

The reality is, there are far more books published in a given year that I want to read. As I'm at a place in my life where I can afford to buy new books and I have a small local independent bookshop that I want to support, I have been purchasing most of the new books I want to read.

To avoid completely breaking the family budget I make a pre-order list a month in advance and email it to the bookshop. That makes things simpler for the bookshop too — as it is literally run by three people: the owner and her two employees. It also gives me a way of tracking which books are no longer "wishlist" but are now on my "to be read" shelf.

I've purchased forty-four books so far this year. Of those, I've read 21 of them. That means I've read 47% of the 2019 books I've purchased. Of those purchased and read, I've reviewed 19 of them, or 43% of my purchases.

There are times when I feel like I should only be reading my newly purchased books. Doing so would certainly catch me up but it would get in the way of other reading. For instance, I am also trying to finish the remainders of last year's purchases. I have forty-three books left unread from last year. There are also library books, ones I'm primarily reading for work. I'll talk about those in a later post.

For right now, my goal for reading this year's purchases is to not fall as far behind as I did last year. Right now the five books I'm reading were all released last month, about six weeks ago. I have sixteen purchases so far this month and I have't read any of them. I have five left unread from February beyond the ones I'm currently reading.

We'll see how it goes.

Comments  (2)

Comment #1: Sunday, March 24, 2019 at 06:31:05

Deb Nance

I am very cautious about purchasing new books. It's so wonderful that you purchase books and support a local bookshop at the same time. And you have read almost half of the books you have purchased. That is excellent.

Comment #2: Tuesday, March 26, 2019 at 22:00:00

Pussreboots

I used to rely more on the local library but with the time it takes for them to purchase books and process them, it would add three to six months before I could read a book. I used to do NetGalley but there books were coming so early and expiring so quickly that it was more stress than it was worth. This way, I have more control over what I read and when I read it. The books I'm then free to give away or sell without strings.