Open Thread: GoodReads is Very Disappointed in Me


If you can't quite read the picture, it's informing me that I've read 104 out of my 365 book reading goal, which means I'm sitting at 28% with no hope in sight. Ha.

It's not like I set the goal realistically. I picked 365 because there are 365 days in a year and reading a book a day sounds lovely, if a bit tiring. And a good fair few of those 104 that I did read were ABNA entrants (which take a heck of a lot of time, let me tell you) and graphic novels like Claymore, which I can whip through pretty fast. So it's rather arbitrary, really, but a fun way to track my reading in general terms over the year.

(Husband has also pointed out that according to his ARAT program, my reviewing -- and therefore my reading -- has plummeted since I started the blog. Double Ha.)

But! The astute among you have noticed that there is a badge for winning. Ana does not like to not win badges. Badges are basically my reason for getting out of bed in the morning. Badges are why I cannot bear to uninstall the Kobo app from my phone, despite being inferior to every other reader app I own, because the Kobo app treats reading like Pokemon. And, seriously, I eat that sort of thing up. And since there's basically no chance that I'll read 265 books this weekend, I fixed it another way.


All better now!

How many books have you read this year?

OPEN THREAD BELOW!

20 comments:

Bayley G said...

*Thinks about past month or so* Ah, five? Six?

*Remembers the beginning of summer. Visualizes the pile of books she tore through during her dissertation*

Thirty? Forty?

Now you make me want to go count XD Maybe I'll keep track in 2012.

Dav said...

Not enough. I can only afford to buy a few, and to hit the library on occasion, and I've got two jobs plus chemistry classes, and I really should be reading literature reviews if I have any time. Which . . . hahahaha.
Maybe 20? 30? *is sad*

Charleen Merced said...

LOL. I laughed from the beginning of this post to the end. Best line: "because the Kobo app treats reading like Pokemon."

I might actually re-install that app!

I set a goal of 50 this year in good reads. I finished my goal in...September? Then I pushed it to 60. Which I have not completed. I would love to put 75 but, I am in such a reading slump and have no time at all, that I can't.

And NOW that you tell me there is a badge....

1. Get book.
2. Read book.
3. Reach goal.
4. Get badge.
5.
6.
7. Profit!

Brin Bellway said...

I think Mom's a bit disappointed at how few books I've read this year. I try to look at it this way: I still spend much of my time reading, but blogs rather than books. (Pretty much all of my book-reading is when I don't have Internet access.) Think of all the neat things I've learned from the collection of science bloggers on my feed! All those wonderful beautifully-crafted Right-Behind-type stories (I'm looking at you, chris the cynic)! The socialisation of writing in such a way that people write back! (Way more socialising in my (almost) year as a Slacktivite than...probably any of the years before it.)

Gelliebean said...

I signed up to read 365 books as well, but I didn't join Goodreads until May-ish and couldn't remember all the ones I'd read previously to that.... I got up to about 160 as of a few weeks ago, and then got more interested in reading than in logging what I'd read and lost track again.... :-( Then I got frustrated and decided to start all over next year in that way I have of wanting everything to be perfect. Which in this case, which I'm now already regretting, meant deleting all the books I had already logged in which didn't have an actual review attached to the ranking so that the slate would be clean. I think I have issues.

Ana Mardoll said...

We MUST get you an eReader and a subscription to the Free Library of Philadelphia. Library books without ever leaving the house! It's heaven. :)

Ana Mardoll said...

Seriously, the app is so addictive. It tracks your READING STATISTICS.

Unfortunately, the tracking is a little buggy. So that sucks. But it's still so wonderfully geeky. I wish they'd update it so that I could highlight PROPERLY and export said highlights.

Ana Mardoll said...

We're educational! I can't count how much I've learned on blogs this year. :D

Dav said...

Ooh, yeah. That would be nice. I knew there had to be something to like about Philadelphia.

Timothy (TRiG) said...

I keep track of my reading in my h2g2 journal. Except that I forget to post some books. At the moment, I'm reading non-fiction (currently a sociolinguistics textbook, for the fun of it), which is slower going than fiction*.

TRiG.

* Well, there are exceptions. To the Lighthouse is a very short book and took me over a year.

Loquat said...

I've got enough issues with my MMO achievements, thank you very much. (Only 2 more River of Souls raid achievements to get my ghost horse! Dammit, guildies, quit dying during the final boss fight!)

Also, I've been neglecting my reading, but picked up quite a few books once a) I was given a Kindle for my birthday, and b) I got a temp job in a call center, where they had literally nothing useful for us to do when the phones weren't ringing. (Not that this prevented some of the suits from promulgating rules that said You Must Not Do Anything Except Read Work-Related Material During Downtime, but the suits were only around for a few days and then wandered off, leaving us with the supervisors who knew damn well how much morale would suffer if we actually had to obey that rule full-time.) I read most of the Vorkosigan Saga plus some China Mieville and John Scalzi.

Libby said...

I would guess I've read about eighty books this year. For the first nine months, I had to buy every book I read. Then I moved to a place with a beautiful, free-to-use network of well-stocked English libraries and now have a "hold" list that is three pages long. (Kit, I have your books on it! I'm next in line for "In Great Waters.") Working has definitely slowed my reading, but I still finish about three a week. Next year should be amazing.

hapax said...

Well, since last year's resolution was to keep mini-reviews of my reading on my LJ, I just went back and counted, and I think that was 110 (some DNFs, some re-reads, so it's hard to be exact). Then I think I've got at least half a dozen still to enter, plus another couple dozen paid reviews, so... pushing 150, maybe?

But that doesn't count all the new stuff I skim as it goes through my desk on the way to the shelves, so I can do decent readers advisory. (Really, sometimes I laugh and laugh when I think I get *paid* to do this job).

And app like you mention would drive me bonkers, though. I have enough trouble forcing myself to do the LJ tracking. I hate every summer when the Adult Summer Reading Club comes around, with its goals and its reporting and its preset formats and the prizes! for READING! (what an off-putting concept; it's like being offered prizes for breathing) and yet I have to sign up and participate to set a good example for the rest of the staff.

I am NOT the target audience. :-(

Ana Mardoll said...

*laughs* Yes, I would very much love prizes for breathing. ANA WANTS HER COOKIE. But I can see why it would feel differently if you *had* to sign up as an example. That would take all the fun out of it for me, too. I don't share my stats, I just find them personally fascinating. :)

(For instance, we just got a new recumbent bike that has a USB plug. I'm obsessively using it, but just for fun and interest. If I *had* to use it to track my time and get to a goal, I'd be miserable.)

I totally want your job, by the way. :)

Laiima said...

I feel like I need to preface my number with: (1) I'm not a member of GoodReads; (2) I'm unemployed, so I have lots of time to fill up; (3) I read fast; (4) I read more than I do anything else.

Per LibraryThing, I've read 326 books this year. I have only reviewed 19 of them. (I do have a specific tag for books that I read enough of to know that they aren't worth me finishing, so I don't accidentally read them again. They are not part of the 326, and there was 11 of them.)

Ana Mardoll said...

Wow, that's awesome, even considering your caveats! Congrats!! :D

kitryan said...

Lurker here-I'm at about 270 this year- it's my second year logging them and aiming for 365 and I might have had a shot if I hadn't had a lot of work opportunities keeping me busy over the fall and winter. Up through September I was ahead- more books than days. I'm glad of the work, but a bit saddened that I will not make the goal

Darth Ember said...

Um... I've lost count. Something over 200 is my conservative guess.
This year there's been a second-hand bookshop not too far away. So the number of books I own has skyrocketed. (We don't have enough shelf space for all of them, which is a bit scary, since we have multiple bookshelves.)
Also I've been reading books on my computer; got through quite a few that way.

Ana Mardoll said...

200 and 270 is nothing to turn up the nose at! You should both be super proud -- that's awesome!! :D

Darth Ember said...

Conservative guess, like I said. It's probably more.
Though that does remind me... in high school, we had library cards - they were cardboard things we wrote the names of the books we borrowed onto. When you used up both sides, they stapled on a new card. I eventually got my card replaced entirely; it was made up of so many cards it no longer fit right in the little box they sat in. They'd had to start stapling each new card to the previous one, instead of to the whole thing, because it was too thick to get staples through.
It was huge.
And I proceeded to do much the same thing with my replacement card.
When I left, they joked that if I'd saved them, they could have put them up somewhere to show people. Because my cards had more pages than those of anyone else who was there when I was.
And I accomplished that despite a three-book limit per borrowing session.

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