It will come as no shock that I seem to have inability to be a consistent contributer to the Sunday Salon, or to my own blog in general even. My reading life has been going moderately well. Even after finishing two books this week, I am still struggling to really get good chunks of reading time in.
Life, focus, twitter, there are so many reasons why I don’t curl up in bed with my book night after night. But one of the biggest issues will probably be that I don’t have a nice reading lamp in my room. I am not sure when that became so vitally important, but it did. Another issue is that I have stopped using the library so I don’t have the built in system of the due date to drive me to read. In order to combat this I am trying to set up a bit of a reading schedule for myself that I hope to stick by. I am only going to go about ten books out, but I am hoping this will keep me a bit more on track than I have been.
Do you make a list of books you are going to read and stick to that order? Do you just read books as your whims go? For me the hardest part of sticking with this will be that I read more than one book at a time. I know I will be tempted to start all ten books at the same time and be in the same situation I am now.
My goal recently was to finish 3 books that I was currently reading before starting a new book. That seems to be helping with my focus issues because I have finished two books in one week and it should not be a day or two more before I am finished with the last one. When I do finish it (not exactly sure which book it will even be), here is my tentative list of the next 10 books I would like to read.
- Rae by Chelsea Swiggett
- Boneshaker by Cherie Priest
- The Dead Tossed Waves by Carrie Ryan
- Book I haven’t finished yet (Cherry Heaven, Never Let Me Go, The Iron Heel)
- Grimspace by Ann Aguirre
- Perdido Street Station by China Miéville
- Incarceron by Catherine Fisher
- Epic by Conor Kostick
- Exile by R. A, Salvatore
- The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi
Other books on my radar are Feed, Before I Fall, and Bass Ackwards and Belly Up.
Today I am planning on putting in some quality time with Cherry Heaven. Unfortunately the pages turn very slowly when I am reading this book. I want to just race through it and be over with it. I do want to know what happens in the end but i don’t feel like dealing with all the meandering that is happening in the middle. What do you do when you want to know the end of the story but are struggling to get through it?
I make a list of books that I want to read. I revise the list every few months.
ReplyDeleteI'm a new follower!
My schedule is sort of set by my review books. I make myself read them before publication date. I do like making lists though and reading from them. :-)
ReplyDeleteI like your list of books. For me, if I'm finding myself wondering how the book ends, but losing focus in the middle, I skim. Sad, but true.
ReplyDeleteBefore I Fall is a very good book. I do sometimes make a list, though not in anyway ordered, more a loose idea of a few books I want to get read within a few weeks. More often than not, though, I'll pick a book at whim.
ReplyDeleteIf I'm finding a book difficult to get through I'll sometimes look at the end. There's usually a subplot I want cleared up that, if I know how it ends, I become more enthusiastic about finishing it.
I have a HUGE list that I keep on Goodreads (over 200 books just in the TBR list). Instead of reading the books in order, though, I pick a category or a goal. I used the Spice of Life challenge last year to make myself read the food-related books on my list. This year, I am trying to read or remove all the titles that have been on the list for longer than a year. If I read in a certain order, I would feel hampered. This system seems to be working for me.
ReplyDeleteAs for your other dilemma, I'm with Elana: I skim the boring bits in the middle. This usually happens when the plot has already been set up and the protagonist has to make a decision, but she spends a good chunk of the middle dithering, "Will I or won't I?" When the story spends too much time in the character's head, I lose patience.