On New Years’ Day, I made just one resolution: to read at least 75 books. I’ve always been an avid reader, but the older I get, the less time I have to read, and thus the fewer books I end up reading. Without a goal to reach, I’d end up reading very few books. So, the goal!

Being that I’m an organisation addict (thanks to the OCPD), simply keeping a written list of books was out of the question. Instead, I turned to GoodReads, which is, for the uninitiated, like Last.FM for books. Every book I read I add to GR, along with the date I started reading it, my rating, and, sometimes (always, if it’s a First Reads book), my review of said book. I add each book to my 2011 Reads shelf, but that’s just my need for organisation, for GR keeps track for me, since I’ve signed up for the 2011 Reading Challenge. As long as I include the date I finished a book (and said date is in 2011), it’s added to the tally. So far, I’ve read 52 books this year. According to the little widget, I’m 21 books (26%) ahead of schedule. Behold!

2011 Reading Challenge

Shannon has

read 54 books toward her goal of 75 books.

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52 of 75 (69%)

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I owe a bit of credit to my ongoing TV/Phone/Internet Provider Saga¹, without which I likely wouldn’t have read quite so many books so far: being without cable TV, phone, or internet at home is very conducive to constant reading.

It’s not (at all) surprising that most of the books I’ve read this year have been of the horror genre. Some, like The Keep and Rosemary’s Baby², are books I’d been meaning to read for years; while others, like The Passage and Dark Places, are not necessarily books I would’ve read had I not been marching toward a goal, but which I ended up loving. (“The Passage” is especially fantastic, and is probably the best book I’ve read this year.) There’s also a smattering of bios and autbios (like Cherie Currie’s updated Neon Angel) and historical fiction (like Margaret George’s Memoirs of Cleopatra), but it’s mostly horror.

Along with trying to branch out (like Passage and Dark Places), I’ve started finishing every book I start, even if I don’t particularly love it, all in the name of… well, mostly just to get another book done. Peter Straub’s A Dark Matter, for example; had I not been working toward said goal, I’d have given it up early on, because it’s just not a good story. (Which is surprising, as I’ve been a Straub fan for years.) Ditto for Cocaine’s Son, a woe-is-me, my-dad-sucked-but-not-any-worse-than-many-dads “memoir” I picked up on an impulse. Bad impulse. Typos and boring life stories aside, I finished the damn thing. So far, I’ve successfully finished every book I’ve begun, but as the year goes on and I keep reading books I’m less than thrilled with, I’ve been reading more reviews for each book than I normally read before buying/reading; I’m tired of forcing myself through boring books, dammit.

When I started this “project” in January, I had a list of books to read, and even sorted them in order of when I’d read them. By February, I’d given up on said list and just started poking through my to-read shelf then buying then buying the books online or going to the local Borders’ with a small list.

At the moment, I’m reading two books: Carrie Ryan’s The Dead-Tossed Waves,the second book in the “Forest of Hands and Teeth” series; and Feed, the first in the “Newsflesh” series. I have no solid ideas re: what I’ll read next, but it’ll likely be the next in either of the aforementioned series’: Deadline (Newsflesh, #2) or The Dark and Hollow Places (Forest of Hands and Teeth, #3). Can you tell I’m on a zombie jag lately?

Anyone else participating in the GR challenge (or any reading challenge)? Anyone have any good book suggestions? I’m open to absolutely anything, except romance. (Mind, I don’t mind romance in a book — good luck trying to find a historical fiction book without some romantic element — but I don’t dig books that revolve around romance or relationships.) I’m also a little burnt out on vampires (unless I’ve missed something amazing, like The Passage).

1. And yes, I mean “ongoing.” More about that in a few days when I’m less annoyed at AT&T. [↩]
2. Yes, I admit it, I’d never read “Rosemary’s Baby.” I’m a bad, bad horror junkie. [↩]

I spilled a few droplets of soda on a page of the latest book I’m reading (Cherie Priest’s “Fathom,” which is great so far) a few moments ago, and found myself thinking about the mini-meltdown I’d have had had I done that to one of the eBook Readers I’ve owned. Eventually I started thinking about the other advantages of real books over eBooks. Until I started making that little list in my head, it hadn’t occurred to me just how biased I am, personally, against eBooks.

I’ll be honest: I love gadgets. From my collection of smartphones and media players to the video game consoles and every other damn gadget I’ve amassed, it’s pretty safe to say that I’m fairly enamoured with shiny things that do interesting things.

Except eBook readers. Try as I might (and I have tried: I’ve owned both a Kindle and a Nook. Past tense.), I can’t force myself to find the prospect of reading full-length books on a small screen appealing enough to justify switching to an eBook reader full-time. I admit, I like the idea of being able to carry a dozen or more books around with me at any given time without the weight – the physical book part – and I do keep some books loaded onto my iPhone in case I find myself stuck in traffic or between classes without a book, but for me, the advantages of an eBook reader end there. They are, without question, handy little things indeed (not to mention that the Nook is a sexy gadget if ever there was one), but there’s something about reading an honest-to-goodness, words-on-paper book that the Nook and its like just can’t contend with. Maybe it’s the weight of the book in my hands, or the smell of the paper, or the ability to turn a page with your fingers and immediately move to the next page instead of having to wait a second or two (or longer, in some cases) for the next page to load. Maybe it’s the simple fact that it’s easier to pick up a book and flip to the bookmark than to pick up the Reader, wake it up or turn it on, open the book, and wait for it to load. Mabe it’s that shopping for eBooks isn’t the same as buying a real book in a brick-and-mortar store, and that I’d rather wander through a local Barnes & Noble store¹ for an hour to find a new book than poke through the B&N website for a few minutes to find a new eBook. Or, hell, maybe it’s nothing more than that I can read a book in the bathtub without constant fear of water droplets. (Which isn’t to say that water doesn’t ruin real books, but would you rather lose a $20 book to water or a $300+ Kindle?). Whatever it is, it’s enough to keep me adding to my physical book collection, and enough to keep thoughts of buying another reader (I do still have the inklings every now and again – they are still shiny things that do interesting things, after all) at bay.

Before I started that rant in my head, I also thought to myself how glad I was that the little accident had happened to the copy of the book I own, rather than the library copy. There are few things I dislike as much as buying a book only to dislike it, so often, before I buy a book, I check said book out at a local library and read the first 25-50 pages. If I like it, I return it and buy the book. If I don’t, well, no loss, right? I’d just finished that book-test with “Fathom” this morning, and bought my copy of it today. I’ve managed never to damage a library copy of a book, but somehow, I think having to replace/pay for a copy of a library book and buy a copy for myself would annoy me much more than having just bought the book blindly to find out I disliked it.

It’s funny how a few drops of spilt Coke can send me off on such a tangent.

1. In practice, I actually prefer small, independent bookstores, but they’re getting increasingly difficult to find. [↩]