I read to my partner for 10-15 minutes every night before bed. Hard to know how many books it’s been because we accidentally started East of Eden and it’s been over 6 months I think.
Enjoying the process is key here I think. Don’t count books. Enjoy each page and each chapter as part of a journey where you’ll eventually get there.
Steinbeck <3
Have you read In Dubious Battle? It’s my fav after Grapes of Wrath
That’s good. I beat myself up for only reading a few books some years.
But I read a looot online.
Reading is fundamental
The Library… is open.
👓
Remember, reading isn’t about numbers.
Don’t turn into that douche that always quotes how many books they’ve read that year like speed reading and skimming are admirable and all books are the same length.
Maybe the sort that piles them all up and posts to social media thinking it is impressive or that people will like them for it.
You read for you. Take your time and enjoy.
I mean it isn’t being a douche, this fact motivated me to set 15 minutes aside a day because now I know I can get to the books I want to read in a reasonable amount of time and helped combat sunk cost feelings when I start something.
That’s clearly not what I was saying.
Perhaps you could work on your comprehension skills alongside your reading too?
Wow you’re a fucking asshole, maybe you should go fuck yourself and delete your account and not go on lemmy and project your sad life you piece of shit.
Ok chief.
See, you replied to me in what looked like bad faith, weirdly arguing against something I hadn’t said and now you call me a fucking asshole for pointing that out.
Are you ok? You seem to be going through some stuff.
I mean it. Internet banter is fine, but I don’t want you to suffer.
I mean you started this whole thing with
Don’t turn into that douche that always quotes how many books they’ve read that year like speed reading and skimming are admirable and all books are the same length.
on a post about reading a litlle everyday, so you didn’t really start with the best of faiths either…
Even if it’s Malazan?
/s
I figure I already read tens of thousands of words a day on here and the news apps, and it’s not exactly doing me mental health favors - so I went and renewed my library card this winter and have knocked out about 15 in 4 months. It feels really good to get your sense of focus and attention span back! Takes a bit of time but its like riding a bike, your brain goes back to being a kid.
I hope you had books as a kid.
I hope your kid has books today.
I just wish we could do anonymous book checkouts. No way I’m giving the State a list of everything I read.
This was me, last week lol. Already had the card, but criminally underused it. I love philosophy, but haven’t read most of the actual works, so I picked up some Camus and Kafka. Just finished The Fall, and I’m so glad to have done so.
I also signed up for Libby, thinking audiobooks on hikes would be dope, but so far my mind wanders too much to absorb the words, so that’s been challenging.
I hope your kid has books today.
My kid has books and we constantly read books so I am absolutely outread by the end of the day. To be fair, the hat trilogy by Jon Klassen and gymnastics for the tail Grigori Oster are a lot of fun to read and cut straight to the point, not like grown up books, so I find a lot of enjoyment in what we read in general. But whenever I try to pick up a book for adults I now automatically fall asleep. Best I can do is manga and graphic novels right now. Unfortunately my kid finds them and mistakes these for comics, I ended up having to read Persepolis to a four year old.
This has also impacted my ability to go back to work. I can’t read a scientific paper without falling asleep anymore.
I’m right about on track with you, I’ve read 19 books so far this year, but that includes Roger Zelazny’s Amber series, which are fairly short novels.
I also read a lot on Lemmy, but I’m recently retired, and don’t have a lot else going on.
Not when you read Peter Hamilton and Alastair Reynolds lol.
I’m retired, arthritic, agoraphobic, and neurodivergent… I average slightly more than one book a day.
How do you find new books to read?
Lemmy will hate me for this but I subscribe to Amazon kindle unlimited. Since I read so much, I definitely couldn’t afford to pay for each book and the local library is pretty hit or miss on availability. Ultimately most of what I read is entertaining garbage but when you read compulsively like I do, the entertaining part is more important than the quality.
The term is ‘slop’ I believe. I had a KU account for years and since I mostly read GameLit and LitRPG I have been tied to Amazon because very few KDP Authors publish traditionally outside of special print runs.
What annoyed me most at the time I cancelled was authors putting book 1 in KU and then not the rest of the series. Forcing you to buy the books at inflated prices. Kind of like drug dealers.
I don’t read nearly as much as you, but something like 60 or 70 books a year. I found the opposite to be true: I could find way more that I wanted to read on the Libby library app than on Kindle unlimited. I mostly read SF and fantasy, so I go though all the Hugo and Nebula nominees and read recommendations from places like Locus Magazine. Then I tag those books that interest me in the library app, and place holds (reservations) on a handful of the ones not currently available and start reading ones that are. It seems to work pretty well with zero dollars.
I always have a bunch of books on hold on Borrowbox so there’s always one available when I need a new book. Then I start that one and take the rest off hold.
Get old enough, and you forget them faster than you can read. Just rotate
I’ve forgotten how often I’ve read Pratchett’s Night Watch.
I read Going Postal and Making Money every year. I have every audiobook version for the books. I sometimes read the third one but I’m still annoyed that his Alzheimer’s got bad before he could write ‘Taking Taxes’ and we got a simpler one about trains.
I mean, Stephen King has something like ~60 published novels (from memory)… that would keep even the most passionate readers busy for a year!
Though given how later on he tried to weave all his books together into a single shared universe, there’s probably a bunch of arguments out there about which order to read them in.
I’m reading the book that never ends: lemmy 😎
I got back into reading like a year ago. I must say reading articles online and messaging boards etc do NO favors for your reading comprehension lol. It’s like capping yourself at a 3rd grade level of reading. Not that you shouldn’t spend time reading stuff online and getting up to date on current events etc but reading books is a different kind of focus imo and most even young adult books are written at a higher reading level than most of the stuff we consume on the internet.
It’s getting even worse now that like every other article is spit out by an LLM
the plot is a bit messy, waiting for things to come together
Tbh I only started reading in like season 4 and I’m so confused as to what’s going on. The author needs to stop introducing new characters, we already have too many.
Bean
God now they’re throwing references at me only for people who read the side story “the great bean memeening”. I can’t keep up with the Lemmy extended non-cinematic universe.
I recommend you ponder your orb for help.
Corn
I have a sales job with TONS of down time. I’m on book 5 of Dungeon Crawler Carl and I just started the series last month. I’m usually getting through a book a week for the last 6 months. it’s been awesome.
It’s so sad to see people with downtime jobs scrolling Instagram or tiktok all day instead of reading.
Pro Tip: Take long bathroom breaks at work and spend the time reading labor laws.
Hopefully when they start complaining about your bathroom breaks, you’ve already understood most of the labor laws to file a lawsuit against your shitty employer.
Just don’t do it sitting on the toilet - it promotes haemorrhoids.
There’s a joke somewhere about genocidal Zionists being butt hurt that makes them a bad cross section of humanity as a whole
Is that why? Hmm
I’ve been trying to read more, and stumbled on a little hack that’s worked for me.
I’ve used the app Margins (of course, no app is required) and it allows me to list all the books I’d like to read. The hack is arranging the list by book length ascending. Started with the shortest book on my list, and when I was done I moved onto the next shortest. Completing books gives me the motivation to keep reading.
Hardest part is finding something that tickles me even when I’m exhausted. Something floral and alluring, but soft and flowing. Reading can feel like a chore when you don’t have the mind space. I’m presently trying to distract myself with sci-fi and I just can’t take this much information.
Fuck you, Peter watts, you goddamn wordsmith. I can’t take your verbal girth as I currently am!
