[Public] Reading this year...
Jun. 29th, 2013 08:20 pmSo, I've been doing a lot of reading this year. I'm tracking my progress over on Goodreads, as part of the 2013 Reading Challenge. For those that haven't known me long, until sometime last year, I had actually gotten to the point that I had actually stopped reading completely. Between my eyeglasses prescription being horribly out of date, and my arthritis in my hands making it physically painful to hold a mass market book (nevermind the hardcover monstrosities that I love so dearly)... I just couldn't do it anymore.
Some lovely friends of ours from Romance Divas (a site that![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
elialshadowpine and I help admin at) ended up sending us a Nook Color out of the blue as a thank you for all that we had done. I'd been considering getting one, but at the time I was still a contractor at Livemocha and dealing with insurance (and Drake *sigh*), so I didn't think I'd be able to afford it anytime soon.
It made a huge, huge difference in our lives. We rapidly prioritized gettingelialshadowpine one of her own, so we didn't end up squabbling over them (which I'm ashamed to admit did happen initially. I was still on / recovering from the prednisone at the time, I believe).
This year I wanted to read even more, so I set a goal of 250 books. So far, I've gotten 158 down.. which sounds a bit more impressive than it actually is, as a bunch of those have been comics, novellas, and short stories. To give you a better idea, let me show you some graphs from Goodreads:
( cut for images )
As you can see, there's a significant discrepancy. Lately I've actually been reading on an iPad 3 which I have on loan from my work, which is working out really nicely with the size and weight (and it can handle streaming video, where the Nook Color kind of choked on that). That's been a big bonus for getting into comics, because the added screen real-estate makes a big difference (especially on PDFs).
I've really been loving the BN store, it's really easy to pick books up at 2am without needing to leave the house. There have been a few incidents of "I dont remember buying $50 worth of books last night, but I was on Ambien", but not really many... andelialshadowpine's done the same thing once or twice, so I don't feel bad. The Seattle Public Library has an amazing digital selection as well (including of digital comics, too, which is all kinds of awesome!), and since I have a job in Seattle I have a card through there and the local Timberland library (which doesn't have nearly the same kind of selection, but occasionally comes in handy). I've ended up reading a LOT of books borrowed from SPL, and I'm really grateful for them.
And really? I owe the fact that I can still enjoy reading to some amazing friends who surprised me more than I will ever be able to thank them enough for.
Some lovely friends of ours from Romance Divas (a site that
elialshadowpine and I help admin at) ended up sending us a Nook Color out of the blue as a thank you for all that we had done. I'd been considering getting one, but at the time I was still a contractor at Livemocha and dealing with insurance (and Drake *sigh*), so I didn't think I'd be able to afford it anytime soon.It made a huge, huge difference in our lives. We rapidly prioritized getting
elialshadowpine one of her own, so we didn't end up squabbling over them (which I'm ashamed to admit did happen initially. I was still on / recovering from the prednisone at the time, I believe).This year I wanted to read even more, so I set a goal of 250 books. So far, I've gotten 158 down.. which sounds a bit more impressive than it actually is, as a bunch of those have been comics, novellas, and short stories. To give you a better idea, let me show you some graphs from Goodreads:
( cut for images )
As you can see, there's a significant discrepancy. Lately I've actually been reading on an iPad 3 which I have on loan from my work, which is working out really nicely with the size and weight (and it can handle streaming video, where the Nook Color kind of choked on that). That's been a big bonus for getting into comics, because the added screen real-estate makes a big difference (especially on PDFs).
I've really been loving the BN store, it's really easy to pick books up at 2am without needing to leave the house. There have been a few incidents of "I dont remember buying $50 worth of books last night, but I was on Ambien", but not really many... and
elialshadowpine's done the same thing once or twice, so I don't feel bad. The Seattle Public Library has an amazing digital selection as well (including of digital comics, too, which is all kinds of awesome!), and since I have a job in Seattle I have a card through there and the local Timberland library (which doesn't have nearly the same kind of selection, but occasionally comes in handy). I've ended up reading a LOT of books borrowed from SPL, and I'm really grateful for them.And really? I owe the fact that I can still enjoy reading to some amazing friends who surprised me more than I will ever be able to thank them enough for.
