My So-Called Reading Life, part 1

I kicked off the summer with a bunch of 4- and 5-star reads-- in fact, if you go back to the last week of May, there have been TEN. That is unheard of for me. I was thinking smug thoughts. I've got this book picking thing nailed!!

But then I read four that weren't so great, three of them back to back, so it must have just been coincidence. That sounds like a lot of reading to some of you--doesn't she have anything real to do?  (hey! I've been on vacation! and there were four days of airports and planes!). Others are thinking only a dozen books so far this summer? slacker!!  

Whichever category you fit into, this post and the next one or maybe two are about reading, tracking your reading, reviewing books, figuring out what to read, bookstagram, etc etc. You've been warned.

Years ago, I spent quite a bit of time agonizing over the "right" way to do book reviews. One of the main reasons I started blogging lo, these many years ago, was because I wanted someplace to write about my reactions to the books I read. I don't know many readers around here, and even fewer who share my tastes.

But I got a fair amount of pushback when I posted negative reviews. And since it was much more fun to snark about books I didn't like than prosing on about books I did, the negative reviews tended to be longer and funnier and more numerous.

But what about the author's feelings? I heard. Don't you need to be respectful of the author and all the hard work they put into writing a book? And honestly, I have to say that had never even occurred to me.

First of all, in my mind, authors were godlike creatures that exist in some kind of Elysian Fields where they are far too lofty to notice individual book reviews. And secondly, if they did happen to read my review, why would they care what I think? I'm just a lone reader in the hinterlands of Montana. What possible difference could it make what I think about their book?

But once it was pointed out to me, I got it. If I were an author, I could scan through thirty positive reviews and smile, but it would be the one negative review, no matter who wrote it, that would stick in my craw. So in spite of the unlikelihood of an author running across something that I wrote here in this little space, I quit reviewing books-- other than telling you when I read something I loved, like Less or The Intuitionist.

Unfortunately, reviewing books in my blog was how I had been tracking my reading. I needed a replacement for that, so after trying several different things, I've ended up using Goodreads. I signed up for it ages ago but never did anything more than poke around until a couple of years ago. At first I just marked the books I read and gave them a star-rating (more about stars in Part Two).

Then last year I started adding short reviews. I'm pretty sure that no one reads them, but it helps me to remember what I read and why I liked it (or didn't). No matter how negative I am, there are always a bunch of reviews that are far more negative (Goodreads reviewers can be vicious), so I don't have to worry about posting negative reviews anymore-- although I do try to be polite and respectful.

A quick review only takes a few minutes (usually), and I love being able to refer back to them. Since the Goodreads app is on my phone, it's easy to do no matter where I finish a book (on vacation, sitting in a doctor's office, in bed in the middle of the night)--unlike a journal or notebook or a file on my laptop. I can mark a book as read and give it a star rating in less than a minute, and seeing it there reminds me to write a review later.

I know some of you refuse to have anything to do with Amazon, and Goodreads is owned by Amazon, so there's that. But you don't buy anything on Goodreads, so I think their profit is mainly from advertising. Presumably they're hoping you'll learn about great books on Goodreads and then buy them on Amazon, but for the most part, I no longer buy books on Amazon.

Yep, you read that right. I check out kindle books from my library, and I buy books at indie bookstores when we're traveling, and at Target and Costco when we're not-- they're not indies, but they are local and create local jobs, etc. (We don't have an independent retail bookstore in our town, as I've told you a bazillion times now, although we do have a lovely, very good used bookshop.) The only exceptions are for gifts, and also I subscribe to a couple of "kindle deals" newsletters, so I buy kindle versions of books I want when they're on sale for $1.99 or whatever.

This is entirely too much on this topic, but believe it or not, I'm not even close to done. Enneagram 5: loves to go on and on about topics they're interested in, even if their listeners' eyes are glazing over. I will move on to more interesting things soon. (More interesting to you, but probably not to me-- I can't tell you how much time I spend thinking about this stuff.)