I realized I have over 400 books in my To Be Read pile. A lot of them are when I was in my queer or romantasy phase. I’m over both now, so I think they’re going to get tossed. Life’s too short to read books you don’t like.
Most books are female-driven now. I understand that it’s important to show girls in powerful positions, but geez. Not 75% of the new books in my genre (fantasy). I’m sorry, but I like Harry Dresden in the early days. Or early urban fantasy. Yes, its trope is some white guy in a trench coat living in some down and dirty city, practicing magic. (Oooh, should I have some Black guy in a trench coat practicing mojo and hoodoo in, say, Providence? Hmmmm.)
Anyway, I started cataloguing the books to read for the next few months. I only read at dialysis or in bed, and then on the phone or Kindle respectively. My challenge is to read 30 books this year. It was 75 last year–yeah, right. I got up to cataloguing 13 before I realized I might not make it to 30, never mind 400.
Do I read the first fifty or so pages, the middle, then skip around until I get to the end? Is that reading or a Did Not Finish? If the first fifty–heck, the first twenty, sometimes–doesn’t grab me, it’s definitely a DNF. Medusa’s Sisters was like that; a feminist snorefest. I’ve only read one book so far this year: The Astrology House, a mystery of sorts. Forgettable. I think someone died. There were so many different points of view told in the same voice that I couldn’t tell one person from the other. How does this stuff get published?
I don’t think I’ll make 30 books his year. About twenty hours a week is dialysis. Maybe ten or so is editing/etc. Forty hours of sleep, if I’m lucky. Maybe ten hours of working on my own stuff (that includes gaming). The rest is waiting or transporting to doctor visits. I should get Airpods to listen to audiobooks while I wait.