Hello blog readers!
So as I've repeatedly mentioned over the last year or so i've been...less than focused on this blog and reading in general. 2014 was the first year in a long time that I didn't meet my Goodreads Reading Challenge and I was uncharacteristically upset about it. I was angry and miserable. Ever since I was a little girl, reading has always been the one thing that i've found time for and I all but gave it up last year. Well, i'm not going to promise that i'll do any better this year but I can promise that i'm going to try.
Fortunately/Unfortunately (however you see it), my lack of reading absolutely did not stop me from buying books. So what happens when you spend a year buying books and not reading any? Uh... well let's just say my bookshelves are a little unruly right now.
When 2015 hit with my uncompleted challenge, I found myself with a new challenge. With a house full of books and a pile of bookish gifts for Christmas, I was inundated with options. What genre did I want? What kind of style? Any particular author? Should I read new or old? Can I do re-reads? The internal questions actually had me fraught with doubt that i'd ever be able to pick up again.
Luckily, the lovely Jenna Burtenshaw (Author of the fab Wintercraft series) came to rescue without even knowing it. Her Instagram showed me the delights of having very little choice at all!
Armed with many little pots that I'd gotten for Christmas (Boyfriend and I recently moved into our own house) and a stack of post-it notes from a long lost era, I realised what I had to do.
As you can see in the picture above, I used 3 different jars.
1. To read
2. Read
3. To buy
To me at least, my system is flawless.
Now whenever I find a book on my shelves that I had forgotten about and still need to read, it simply goes in the 'to read' pot to await its turn. When the time comes for a book, all of the decision is taken away! I just pick one out and voila. In theory, I should never be disappointed with whatever comes out, because they're all in there for a reason :)
Same goes for the 'to buy' pot. Every time i'm feeling the itch to go book shopping - I can just take out a slip from the pot and buy a book that I've actually been wanting!
And the 'read' pot? - Well even I need a little visual encouragement sometimes :)
The aim is to have more slips of paper in the 'read' pot than any other by the end of the year. Exciting! I thrive on goals and challenges and i'm really hoping I stick with this one. So far i've read 9 books this year, 4 ahead of my challenge, all thanks to the new brightly coloured system.
So what I really want to know is this - How do you choose?
I'm sure like me, there are way more books than time and choosing a book to read can feel really daunting. Especially after a great read.
Let me know how you decide what book to read next and how you limit your own book buying.
5 comments:
I kind of decide on a whim and usually influenced by whatever I watched recently, or just whatever book is closer to hand.
As for buying... well not a single ounce of planning there :)
Welcome back, Caragh! We missed you here in the blogging community. This is quite a catchy, fun way to determine what you are going to read while making sure it does not cause too much clutter within your book collection.
I decide what to read based off of urge. If I have a hunch to read a particular book or author, I go for it. Popular demand (like for The Fault in our Stars) is also something that catches my attention, though this only happens every so often.
Good idea, I want some of those.
My favourite way to read is to just grab whatever book I feel like at the time - unfortunately sometimes that can be really stressful! So far this is working for me and i'm still ahead of my reading challenge :)
Thanks for the welcome back, Josh.
Your main problem Cazz is you like to reread books like with the Harry Potter series you read all the previous books every time the next one came out lol
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