First up, I'm going to be reading Shattered by Karen Robards. I started this book yesterday afternoon, so my starting position is at page 104. I'll be reading here in my hotel room in Arcata, California, and I'll be reading by flashlight so that I won't disturb the hubby who is still sleeping. I have about 15 minutes before the starting gun, so I'm going to hop over to Shaunesay's blog to see if she's posted anything and by then it will be time to start reading.
Ready? Set? Let's Go!
I'm lining up the books which I think I'll be reading tomorrow. Certainly I'm going to finish reading Shattered by Karen Robards. I started reading it this afternoon—having finished two books which had been in progress. I had thought I'd start things off with a clean slate at the beginning of the Read-a-Thon, but I didn't want to NOT read between 3pm when I finished the last book and 5am when the Read-a-Thon begins. Queued up behind Shattered are two other books which I owe to friends at BookObsessed: Kiss at Your Own Risk by Stephanie Rowe and One Day at the Call Center by Chetan Bhagat. I also have two books lined up on my Kindle: Storm From the Shadows by David Weber and A Face Turned Backward by Lauren Haney. I really don't know what I'll choose to read, but if these books don't satisfy, I have 1000 others to choose from on my Kindle alone!
You know ... I really shouldn't read other people's blogs. They stimulate me and the next thing you know, I'm posting something on my own blog. This particular post is a direct response to My Crazy Reading System. Reading this post, there were two things that jumped out at me. The first is the physical location of her books and the second is how she selects the next book that she will read.
Like the original author, I have books in several places through my house and those places are related to how soon I will be reading a given book. But I'm not as organized as she is. The "deep storage" is in two rooms where TBR books are stacked on the floor, leaning against the wall, and in multiple stacks—not organized in any way other than size so that the stacks don't fall over. I estimate 350 books in my parlor and 200 books in the guest room. Then there are two bookcases in my den. One contains lots of TBR books, 2 deep on the shelves. My estimate is about 150 books in that bookcase. The other bookcase has a mix of TBRs and owed books. I do quite a bit of book swapping through BookObsessed, Paperback Swap, and BookMooch—mostly BookObsessed, though. For PBS and BookMooch, I only offer already-read books, while at BookObsessed, I often swap TBRs. So this bookshelf holds the owed TBRs and owed books ready to mail out, and the rest of the space is occupied by general TBR books. I've got about 25 owed books and probably 40-50 other TBRs in this bookcase.
Now, when it comes time to choose a book to read, I freely admit that I read by the mood that I'm in. Sometimes I'm in the mood for a paranormal romance and at other times I'm craving a cozy mystery and then there are times when nothing but hard science fiction will satisfy. Since I have a number of owed TBRs which need to be read so I can mail them off, I keep a list of these books organized by due date. And when it's time to start a new book, I try to pick one from near the top of the list. Since I read by mood, it very well may be that the book due the soonest doesn't appeal to me—and sometimes I have to make a decision whether I'm going to buckle down and read the book or give in to my mood and mail the book unread. Invariably, when I do settle down to read one of these books that isn't particularly attractive, I thoroughly enjoy the book and wonder why it was that it took me so long to start reading it.
Back to the TBR books on hand ... my Kindle is even more out of control. Today, there are 1336 books on the Kindle and and 752 “Archived Items” sitting on the Amazon server. This large number of books is primarily due to the fact that I've eagerly downloaded as many free books as I could—particularly books that have been self-published or released by independent publishing houses. I love the opportunity to discover a new author (or at least a “new-to-me” author) with very little investment. I guess there are a lot of people who are introduced to new authors by receiving Advanced Reader Copies of books, but I've not gotten into that community.
So, thanks to shelovestoread for stimulating this long post about “Reading Systems”. It's been fun to think about and to blog about.
What are your literary “pet peeves”?
With the flood of self-published [electronic] books, my pet peeve is now the lack of editing before a book is released. Now don't get me wrong, it's not just self-published books that suffer from this problem—I'm finding it in books from mainstream publishers as well. I'll use as an example a book that I recently read, Sketch Me If You Can by Sharon Pape, published by Berkeley Prime Crime and purchased as a Kindle edition from Amazon. On page 95, I read: She picked up the the thin scrap of plastic. It wasn't as soft and flexible as the kind of wrap sold by the role in grocery stores and used in homes all over the country to store leftovers. Yes, “role” when the correct word is “roll”. Spellcheckers can't do it all for you—some human needs to read the book and note the needed corrections. This is one of the most egregious errors I found in the book, but by no means the only one.
My complaint about poorly edited books is that each time I run into such an error, it breaks the flow of the story. At the very least, I'm annoyed. If it has happened too frequently, I become angry and indignant. Unfortunately, this sloppiness can totally ruin an otherwise wonderful book. Someone who is self-publishing has no one to blame but herself. An author whose books are distributed through a well-established publisher deserves better. And the publisher who failed the author deserves a smaller cut of the book's sales.
This prompt comes from Bookish Sarah who posed this question in response to a query from Deb in which her final question was, “What question have I NOT asked at BTT that you’d love me to ask?” Deb liked many of the questions that were shared with her and from time to time she asks the rest of us to respond to them. Like now.
Over at Breaking the Spine, Jill sponsors "Waiting On" Wednesday, a meme that asks book bloggers to post about the books that they are eagerly anticipating. The one book that I am most anxious to receive is Shades of Earth by Beth Revis, the third (and supposedly final) book in her trilogy which starts with Across the Universe. Now this may be the lamest "Waiting On" post you'll find linked in this week because I don't have a cover image to share—nor a synopsis.
I don't remember where I first heard of Across the Universe, but whenever it was, I added it to my Kindle wishlist, and my friend Nicolé was kind enough to send it to me in March and I read it right away. I really enjoyed it and immediately put the sequel A Million Suns onto my wishlist. Lo and behold! Nicolé purchased it for me from my wishlist in early April and I sat down and read it as fast as I could. Still enjoying the story line, I was a bit distressed to discover that there's to be one more book, but it won't be available until January 2013.
Since all that I can find is the planned availability date and the author's website doesn't even have a synopsis, here's the story so far: When teen-ager Amy is frozen aboard the interstellar spaceship Godspeed, she expects to wake up 300 years in the future on a new planet. Instead, she's awakened early to discover that someone is murdering the frozen colonists. If Amy doesn’t figure things out soon, the next people taken from their cryogenic chambers might not survive—including her parents. In book two, which begins three months after her awakening, the ship and its occupants have been getting more and more out of control. It becomes clear that if they are to survive, they have to get off the ship. And the blurb at the end of A Million Suns simply says, “And now in book three? It's time to go home.” Oh well. At least I have something to look forward to.
So—I’m really happy to be reading along with everyone else this year, and the challenge of reading while traveling (though not while driving since it’s hubby who will be behind the wheel) should make this a memorable read-a-thon. Can’t wait until next weekend.
