One of my goals for 2010 was to read a book a week. For the calendar-challenged, that meant 52 books for 2010. I was happy to hit my target in October and ended up with 61 books for the year.
Even with all of that reading, the list of books I want to read has not gotten any shorter. Actually, it’s gotten longer. The more I read, the more I want to read and the more attention I pay to new books being published.
The Kindle
I picked up a Kindle this year and managed to read seven books on it. I’m ambivalent about it. It fits nicely in your hand and makes it easy to read a book with one hand.
But the Kindle lacks the substance, feel and permanency of a paper book. I find it inferior. I expect to pay less for a Kindle book than I would for a hardcover book. I found instances where the Kindle edition cost more than the hardcover.
I originally bought the Kindle in anticipation of our canceled trip to Belgium. I definitely understand the advantage of a Kindle holding lots of books and how that could be better than traveling with a thick stack of books.
I do like the immediacy of the Kindle. I can find the book I want, buy it and start reading it minutes. That is a big timesaver.
GoodReads versus LibraryThing
My continuing quest for a way to track the books I read and the books I own continues. [SeeCatalog your Books Online.] I have been using LibraryThing for several years and it contains nearly all of the books in my library. I have also been using GoodReads concurrently to track my library.
I found that LibraryThing did a better job organizing my books and GoodReads had better tools to interact with fellow readers. I was ready to jettison GoodReads because very few people I knew were using it. Then I found that several people at work use GoodReads. So the social side of the site started adding some value.
I’m still adding the books I own and the books I read in both platforms.
My Books
From looking at the list, you would have a hard time seeing much in the way of themes in my reading.
I read the Percy Jackson book series to The Boy, so those five books ended up on the list. I also read the first three Harry Potter books to him. He seemed to lose interest in Book 4 so we are stalled in completing that series. I thought these books had enough substance, so I included them in the list. There were lots of other books we read together that I thought did not have enough substance to include on the list.
I also jumped into the Walking Dead graphic novels so those five books made it on the list. They contain fewer words and more images than your typical book but they have incredible depth, interesting themes and complex story lines. Plus, I like zombie literature.
Fifteen of the 61 were given to me by publishers in anticipation of a review. Those were a mixed bag. Some were really good and some were really bad.
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