SkuldOMG's measly book challenge

Hi everyone! I admire everyone's dedication to books and reading, but since I simply cannot find the time to read as many books as all of you, I'm setting my own private challenge -- increasing my "Books read this year" count by one every year. I attempted this the last years with varying success. Here's my goal this year:

Read 10 or more books!

This might sound like nothing to you, but to me it's a great deal rediscovering my book love. To maybe get some discussion going, I'm asking you - how do you do it? How do you read as many books as you do? Do you set yourself a kind of minimum limit of how long/how much you want to read each and every day? Also where do you read? Do you read in the comfort of your home, before going to bed? While commuting?

I read a lot when I still went to university, I had about 1.5 hours of commute every day, a lot of pages went through my hands that time. Nowadays I have a commute of maybe 30-40 minutes combined each day (to work and back, each drive taking about 15 minutes), so it's not really worthwhile unpacking a book in this time.

Anyways, here's what I'm reading right now and what I hope to finish this year:




Finished:
1. The Descent
2. The Book of Tea
3. Nightmares & Dreamscapes
4. How to Live on 24 Hours a Day
5. The Whisperer in Darkness: Collected Short Stories Vol. 1 (H.P. Lovecraft)
6. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Arthur C. Clarke)
7. 2010: Odyssey Two (Arthur C. Clarke)
8. Hi! My Name is Loco and I am a Racist (Baye McNeil)
9. Loco in Yokohama (Baye McNeil)
10. Doctor Sleep (Stephen King)
11. Kendo World 6.4
12. Hostage to the Devil (Malachi Martin)

Planning to read (in no particular order):
The Horror in the Museum: Collected Short Stories Vol. 2 (H.P. Lovecraft)
The Haunter of the Dark: Collected Short Stories Vol. 3 (H.P. Lovecraft)
2061: Odyssey Three (Arthur C. Clarke)
3001: The Final Odyssey and a couple of books on my wishlist!

Here's to a good year!

We never sneer at reading goals. Your life is your life and 10 books sounds right to you. So it sounds right to me too. Happy reading.

Thanks a lot for your kind words :) I will do my best!

Finished The Descent. It was a pretty good read, even though I got the feeling the author didn't know where he wanted to head with the story. Still, I liked the atmosphere and setting, and the finale was appropriate. I'm intrigued how the sequel will play out!

If you drive to work and you have a CD player, what's to keep you from listening to audio short story collections at least? Sherlock Holmes' stories are about the right length.

I did listen to a couple of audio books while going to University in the past but somehow it's just not the thing for me, I don't know.

Started and finished The Book of Tea today. A great work, really.

I've had years where I barely read any books. It happens - sometimes your priorities are elsewhere, sometimes everything is chaos. :)

As for the questions about reading habits... at the moment, I read for 20-30 minutes before going to bed at night, and I've recently started reading while I drink my morning coffee as well. I might grab a couple more minutes here and there in the day, depending, but mostly that's it. Luckily, I'm a fast reader.

I never could get into listening to audio books while I was driving either, I found I either got distracted by the book and forgot to take my exit, or got to work without hearing a single word of the book. Recently I've started listening to non-fiction audio books while running at the gym. So far, so good. I think I'm better at listening to non-fiction than fiction.

Anyhow, good luck on achieving your goal!

I'm sure you will get through your ten. As for when I read it is for about 40 minutes in the morning while hubby takes the dog out to get the paper and then at snatched moments during the day, if the book is gripping! I have been known to take Stephen King into the kitchen while I am cooking tea.(That's high tea - or dinner)but since Pointless came back onto UK TV I watch that instead. I have only ever listened to the book I wrote myself on a CD. I like reading the words and a strange voice spoils a book for me. I can't read at night. I'm too tired.

It hugely differs when, where, and how long I manage to get to read each day. To each his / her own anyway. What unites us is the love of books, not how many we manage per year.

P.s.: It's only Feb 1st and you've already read two - aren't you ahead of schedule? ;-)

>10 Nicole_VanK:
Haha, true but The Book of Tea only has like 50 pages. Also I'm already 3/4 through Nightmares & Dreamscapes since I read a majority of the short stories in there last year already. So it's not really indicative of how much I will manage through the rest of the year. My vacation will be over this Monday too, and as such I probably won't be able to read 2+ hours each day has I have been these last days, unfortunately.

>8 ursula:, 9
Reading in the morning hasn't occurred to me at all until now, strangely. I like to take my morning coffee with a quick scout through the Internet's news sites and Facebook but maybe I will try to change that habit. Thanks for the idea!

Finished Nightmares & Dreamscapes today. I have really come to value Stephen King as a short story author over the past few years and this book once again proves it. Great stories among them, like The Night Flier, The Moving Finger or The Ten O'Clock People. To my surprise there was also a Sherlock Holmes story involved, which I liked a lot. I have to admit that I skipped the last story (Head Down), but just because I frankly did not understand a word of it. I have never in my life had any affiliation with baseball, plus English is not my first language, so I just couldn't keep on reading through 60 pages of baseball lingo which I barely understood.

Nevertheless, great book! On to more short stories - three volumes of Lovecraft are waiting for me.

Found through a random post on Hacker News, read through How to Live on 24 Hours a Day, a great essay of advice from another time-period, but still relevant today.

Ah! I've read Buried Alive by Arnold Bennett, and found it brim-full of wit. Ordering your title from the library.

Read 2001 and 2010. I've really taken an interest towards Space, Science Fact and Science Fiction again, so those two were a really good read. Can't wait to read the sequels! Also my wishlist has been growing steadily, so as soon as Doctor Sleep hits, I'm probably going to order a pile of other books to keep me company in the long and cold winter months.

I treated myself to a Kindle, since it was on sale on Amazon for 49€. I have shied away from eReaders and eBooks in the past, but a friend of mine said how he was reading way more since he got himself one. I said to myself "why not" and ordered it on a whim. Lo and behold, in only one week I plowed through two books, and no short ones either! It did help that they were both very great books, the debut and followup of a very talented Blogger who lives and teaches in Yokohama, Japan. His blog is located at www.locoinyokohama.com and if you have any interest in either Japan, living abroad, cultural challenges, racism or just want to read one or two great memoirs, go and check them out!

Finished with #10! It was Stephen King's Doctor Sleep, and it wasn't really what I expected but it was still a fun ride. Now I'm on Hostage to the Devil and I expect to devour this one pretty quickly. Read the first 20 or so pages yesterday before heading to sleep and it got me hooked!

Well done Skuld!

Thanks! Got some more for Christmas, Yokohama Yankee and 11.22.63, and there's still some on reserve, so I'm well equipped for the rest of the holidays and the start of the New Year.

I also have an ereader, but I don't read more because of it. How does this work for you?

I read quite a lot, but I'll admit, it helps being single. I read in the morning, during breakfast. I have a very short train commute, I guess about 10 min, but I read during that as well. And I read in the evening, while eating dinner, and definitely a few pages in bed.

>20 zjakkelien: it might have been more because of the books instead of the ereader :) I'm not finding myself popping it out on my short commute or on break at work as often as I used to in the beginning but maybe that's because I don't have the books I'm reading at the moment on it but as their physical forms. Seeing as you seem to squeeze in every little bit of reading time you can get, there's not much room left for improvement, is there? :)

21: Haha, no, I guess not. Well, it's not like I read all the time, I do also watch television, and I've noticed that quite some time goes to LT and a book forum I'm a member of. Talking about books takes more time on some evenings than actual reading! For me it's the same as for you: the better the book, the more time I read...

Today on New Year's Eve I finished Hostage to the Devil, and what a book it was! I can't even begin to grasp that it is all real. Anyways, it has been a great year, and next year I'm off to the same challenge - increase my read count by one! Which means I get to read one book each month, I hope I can keep up.

Just updated the list with the Kendo World 6.4 issue I downloaded for my Kindle in December. Decided to add it because it's really a collection of essays on kendo and I think it qualifies as a small book in itself :) Strangely enough, the link to the work doesn't seem to be working in my posts..