MY reading Habits

I been inspired t write this by the recent Mookse and Gripes episode, where Trevor and Paul talked over their habits and other bits around them as a reader. I thought I would talk a bit about my reading life and world. I am not as organized as Trevor and Paul. I never will be. My dyspraxia mind is chaotic a lot of the time. But I do have some routines, and over the years, I have blogged how me as a reader work has constantly evolved. I still manage to read over 100 books every year I may not review them all, but since I started last year to track my reading more on Goodreads, I have seen that it is about 120 books a year I read, and I think I will move the stat keeping to Storuy graph as supposedly it can give you more detail even this is a struggle at times for some that constantly will forget to update things due to my dyspraxia one of the worst things I have is this lack of constancy with doing things like this. But over the last few years, I am getting a little better. When do I read well, I am a chunk reader I am not someone who puts bits in here and there. I read the morning I hope to get between 30-45 minutes most mornings  work or not. On my days off, I try to read for a couple of hours during the day. I tend to work 3 days one week and four days the week after. I read every evening for about an hour times more if I’m nearing the end of a book, so that means I tend to read 18-20 hours a week, which sometimes is less, sometimes more. I find I read more in the winter, more so this year, since I inherited my aunt’s serious read lamp. This lamp has a natural light, and I think will add a little more reading in the evening this winter.

Paper/e-book I do have a paperwhite kindle. But I have maybe read 10 e-books in the last ten years I just don’t get on with it. I love the idea the change of font size and font is all brilliant it is just an interaction with the kindle for me never quite works.,I love seeing my progress in a  paper book. I keep the Kindle mainly for Booker International reading as I sometimes need to spend a lot on books, and the books I have read in recent years have been for Booker International. I have tried to use Netgalley but never read the e-books I try to get. So yes I am a paper books man.

Audiobooks had you asked me this a year ago, I said no. I would always say I love book-based podcasts like The Mookse and the Gripes. But I finally decided to try Audible and have since then read and listened to four books so yes, for me yes I LIKE Audio books if they will add another few books to what I read or help me tackle longer books that be great. Book length I am someone that have always preferred books under 300 pages. I have more and more in recent years been avoiding longer books in fact, this was the one tip I did get from Trevor and Paul to spread longer books court over a long time, a chapter or section of pages at a time. I will be trying this more next year. Thanks guys.  I have posted about being a single book read I have a hybrid version of this these days where I’ll read multiple, but I will tend to read chunks of books like Base Camps on Everest. This is something I have done for the last few months, and it has meant I have read more books than I used to as I tend to switch if I feel my reading of a book slowing

MyTBR I have two yellow trolleys, one in my library and the other in our lounge. One is the current TBR books. The other will be when I have a project reading like Czech Lit Month or Club 1962 etc, where I will find all the books for the said project and put them in my library trolley. This is something I have seen Simon Savidge do and I thought it was a great idea to sort them once a month as they tend to also get overloaded with books. I love project reading the year clubs Simon and Karen do are highlights of my years, as is the booker international longlist reading Czech Lit Month, German Lit Month and, of course, Spanish and Portuguese Lit Month. As for me and my mind, the focus it brings gives me clarity, and I’m sure these periods are when I read most. Where I read well I have my sofa downstairs which is by my serious light and upstairs my old reading light is next to a chair from Ikea in my library. I like listening to instrumental music and can cope with some lyrics but more on the acoustic country vibe than some of the punk, new wave industrial goth music I like, which is too distracting to read. Notes I use a few book tabs on passages I love and take pictures of pages I think I will quote, and with longer books take a few notes on index cards this is something I am doing more and more every year. I think in the process of writing my post these days, they are longer I like meaty quotes that I usually mention in the review. Well that’s me, nothing new A chaotic reader who has more order than I did when I started this blog but will be the most planned and ordered reader, but this chaos I have in my mind is what drives the wanderlust in my reading and the driving passion for books in translation as I have a very obsessional mind which is what makes me constant look for those underlooked gems and the sheer solo drive in my mind is for books in translation and world lit which will never change. I am so passionate about this as any of you who have met me will agree with it.