Hello Insiders! It’s Monday, and that means it’s time to talk about books.
No announcements today, just me blathering about rebooting my reading for 2023!
What Are You Reading?
Hello Insiders! It’s Jenn, filling in for Vanessa who is enjoying some time off. And I was not sad to fill in, because I am doing a total overhaul of the way I read and I am excited to tell someone, anyone, about it.
There are a few things that happened in the last few months: Get Booked ended (RIP!); the Read Harder podcast episodes for the 2022 Challenge are all recorded; and the plug-in that removes expirations from my digital galleys well and truly broke, and after searching pretty thoroughly it seems clear that there’s no good replacement for it. Which means that I can’t just download galleys willy-nilly and rely on having them when I want/need them for work reading; I have to do something else, and honestly that realization completely broke my brain. I also barely managed to do the reading I needed to do for work this year; for reasons I don’t fully understand, I had a harder time reading in 2022 than I did in any other year, and that is saying something. (I’m part mood-reader, part work-reader, and between my moods being all over the place and real difficulties we all lived through, it was … rough.)
So, rather than getting frustrated and berating myself as is my wont, I decided to use this as an opportunity to rethink how and what I read. Work-wise, I’ll just be reading for SFF Yeah!, and that’s my wheelhouse anyway. I also like to have an assortment of things going — nonfiction, lighter fare like romances, genres I don’t usually reach for like mystery, etc. But where will I get those books?
I’ve built a queue system, that goes something like this:
- See a book or hear about one, tag it in Edelweiss or on Storygraph with the tag “queue”
- Once a week, review the tagged books to see if any are available from the library — if so, put in a hold request (almost nothing is ever available right away these days) and note it on the new “TBR” tab of my reading spreadsheet
- Review the ones not available from the library to see if I can get an e-galley AND if I’m in the mood to read it (since I don’t have unlimited time anymore)
- Read what comes in from the library and/or Edelweiss!
It seems both really complicated and very simple, and who knows how long it will last or if it will work. But it seemed worth a try.
Currently, my queue has brought me The White Mosque by Sofia Samatar which is an amazingly sharp, thoughtful, incisive memoir plus some history about her life as a biracial woman in the Mennonite and Muslim communities. I’m savoring every page. And the library sent me Kate Clayborn’s Love Lettering, which everyone has been recommending to me for ages and which definitely lived up to the hype.
Anyone else out there changing up their reading habits for 2023? Share in the comments!
-Jenn