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The Evolution of My Wishlist
Before LibraryThing, book blogs, and PaperBackSwap entered my life, I didn’t really have a book wishlist. Oh if I had gotten into a series I’d keep my eye open for the release of the next one or if a friend recommended a book to me I’d put it on hold in the library, but that was about it. Back then I’d generally go browse the library or a bookstore and just grab whatever looked interesting and that was that. My reading was much more hit or miss back then. I’d periodically find a book I really enjoyed, but most of the time it was average or “yuck, this sucks, but I don’t have anything else to read right now, so there you go.” This meant that, believe it or not, I’d been an avid reader for years, but didn’t really have a firm grasp on what type of books I enjoy. I’d read anything I could get my hands on just for the sake of reading, because that’s how it was when I was a kid. We were poor, and so I had to make do with whatever books I could get my hands on. This mentality had firmly carried itself over into my adulthood.
Then I started recording what I read on LibraryThing, blogging my own reviews, and discovered book blogs. I created a wishlist in LibraryThing and started adding pretty much any book that sounded even mildly entertaining to it. I then added them to my PaperBackSwap wishlist until I hit the limit (which is in the hundreds). I couldn’t believe how many books I wanted to read! I then had the phenomenon of a tbr pile of books I own, not books I’d checked out from the library. I was sitting looking at them this week, and it struck me. There are as many books in my tbr pile as I’ve read so far this year, and I could think of at least a few on my wishlist that I wanted to read more than a few of the ones in my tbr pile. Then something someone pointed out to me a couple of months ago rang through my brain. They pointed out that reading is my hobby, and I shouldn’t feel bad for spending money or time on something I enjoy so much. Well, why have I been spending time and money on books that I don’t want to read as much as other ones? Why have I felt obligated to? Because I might like it? Reading is my hobby; it’s not my job. It’s not homework. Why have I felt this obligation to branch out into types of books I don’t tend to like just because others have liked them? I’m not saying I shouldn’t ever branch out. That’d get dull. But if you saw my tbr pile and my wishlist, you’d realize that I was branching out about 50% of the time. That’s a bit too much in my opinion. 20 to 25% is more like it.
I can’t do anything about the books I already have. I acquired them, so I’m going to read them, but I could do something about my wishlist. So I went into my PaperBackSwap wishlist and ruthlessly went through, eliminating books that I’d tossed on there without much thought. What’s left is books I genuinely want to read, and yes, a couple of them are branching out of my norm. They stayed because they sounded genuinely intriguing, not because they sounded mildly interesting. I can only read so many books a year. Why spend time on 0nes that don’t grip me? That don’t affect my perception of the world? Life’s too short. I should enjoy every second of it I get to spend reading for fun.
Imminent Arrivals and TBR #2
The first time I did an Imminent Arrivals and TBR post it turned out to be surprisingly popular with you guys. Yay! So I decided to continue doing them periodically.
Imminent Arrivals (books with the shortest estimated arrival from PaperBackSwap)
Top of the queue is Blindspot
Next is Poison Study
Third in line is Deadtown
TBR
I’m trying to dig down to the books that have been in my TBR pile the longest. First is S
Also sitting on the TBR shelf for a while is Parable of the Sower
Finally there’s Neuromancer
There we have it! Please tell me what you think, my lovely readers!
Imminent Arrivals and TBR
Since I didn’t quite manage to finish my current read on the bus this morning (I literally had to stop in the middle of the climax. I HATE IT WHEN THAT HAPPENS), I thought I’d do something a little bit different today. As you all know, I use PaperBackSwap for acquiring a lot of my books. It lets you sort your wishlist by estimated time to fulfillment, so I thought I’d share with you guys the books that are estimated to be mine shortly.
First up, I’ve been waiting for this book forever: The Forest of Hands and Teeth
Next is The Group
Third is yet another post-apocalyptic book: Life As We Knew It
Ok, so I also have books in my TBR pile, so I’m going to show you guys 3 random books from there. If there’s one you sorely want reviewed soon, tell me now!
I stumbled upon The Integral Trees 
A pretty recent arrival, I Am Not A Serial Killer by Dan Wells features an untrustworthy narrator with sociopathic tendencies who spends the book trying to convince us and himself that he’s not a serial killer. Kind of reminds me of Dexter
Finally, there’s Undead and Unwed 
That’s it! Please tell me what you think, my lovely readers!
Reading Goals for 2010
I don’t want to over-plan my reading for 2010, but I do want to give it a loose structure and maybe broaden my horizons a bit. I also want to be practical about my reading, for instance the fact that I rarely have time to go to the library (erm, the public one, not the one I work at 5 days a week). Anywho, with that in mind, my loosely-defined goals for 2010 are:
- Read the books I bought for undergrad classes but didn’t have time to read then. Seeing as how my two majors are topics I actually like (History and English and American Literature), I actually do want to read these old “assignments.” Expect to see a bit of ancient literature, Chekhov, and noir.
- Read a bit more nonfiction in areas I want to be more educated in, preferably science. Seeing as how I work in a medical library, this should be pretty easy to pull off cheaply.
- Utilize Swaptree to get rid of books I weeded from my collection at the end of the year and in turn get books I want to read. Since I’m doing an exact 1:1 exchange, this should keep my book collection on the smaller side.
- Courtesy of a challenge from @shaindelr over on Twitter who gasped about my not having read any poetry in 2009–read one book of poetry. However, I’m not making any promises that it won’t be of the ancient variety. 😉
- Finally, watching Japanese movies got me pretty into the stories their culture has to offer. That along with seeing some graphic novels in friends’ houses made me want to give the genre an official shot, so I’ll be reading at least 3 graphic novels/manga in 2010. I’m super-excited to read my first Battle Royale, which I wanted to read after seeing and loving the movie.
This work by Amanda Nevius is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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