A few years ago, on Christmas week (my favourite time of the year for excessive, indulgent reading), I caught myself in the act of choosing my next Kindle read based on length, so I could dispatch it quickly and add it to my ambitious Goodreads Challenge.
That’s no way to live, so I re-thought my relationship with Goodreads Challenges.
I also realised that, although I’d read an unprecedented number of new books that year, I remembered very little about them. I’m a very fast reader and (possibly as a result of this) I read every book twice, unless I hate it. But I hadn’t been counting re-reads towards my challenge, so they became superfluous.
That’s also no way to live.
I’ve made a few changes to how I record books on Goodreads. I now count re-reads but not comfort re-reads – I know Tiffany Reisz’s Original Sinners series almost by heart (Nora Sutherlin is my problematic patronus), so I never count those, but I realised this year that I couldn’t remember the name of the love interest in one of Sarra Manning’s Fashionistas books, so I counted that. I wish I could count the books I beta-read for talented friends, but I am so confident that they’ll make their way out into the world that I consider them “banked” against future challenges.
As you can tell, I take all of this box-ticky stuff quite seriously. I have an honour code.
All of which comes in handy when I want to post a round-up of what I read in 2018. Coming soon!
Ellen Brickley 