{"id":1050,"date":"2026-02-01T13:37:46","date_gmt":"2026-02-01T17:37:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/grimaulkin.com\/ljacob-today\/?p=1050"},"modified":"2026-02-01T13:37:46","modified_gmt":"2026-02-01T17:37:46","slug":"getting-thru-my-tbr-before-i-die","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/grimaulkin.com\/ljacob-today\/?p=1050","title":{"rendered":"Getting thru my TBR before I die"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>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&#8217;m over both now, so I think they&#8217;re going to get tossed. Life&#8217;s too short to read books you don&#8217;t like.<br>Most books are female-driven now. I understand that it&#8217;s important to show girls in powerful positions, but geez. Not 75% of the new books in my genre (fantasy). I&#8217;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.)<br>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&#8211;yeah, right. I got up to cataloguing 13 before I realized I might not make it to 30, never mind 400.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>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&#8211;heck, the first twenty, sometimes&#8211;doesn&#8217;t grab me, it&#8217;s definitely a DNF. <em>Medusa&#8217;s Sisters<\/em> was like that; a feminist snorefest. I&#8217;ve only read one book so far this year: <em>The Astrology House,<\/em> 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&#8217;t tell one person from the other. How does this stuff get published?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I don&#8217;t think I&#8217;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&#8217;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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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&#8217;m over both now, so I think they&#8217;re going to get tossed. Life&#8217;s &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/grimaulkin.com\/ljacob-today\/?p=1050\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dont-believe-in-miracles","category-reading"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/grimaulkin.com\/ljacob-today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/grimaulkin.com\/ljacob-today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/grimaulkin.com\/ljacob-today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grimaulkin.com\/ljacob-today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grimaulkin.com\/ljacob-today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1050"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/grimaulkin.com\/ljacob-today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1050\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1051,"href":"https:\/\/grimaulkin.com\/ljacob-today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1050\/revisions\/1051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/grimaulkin.com\/ljacob-today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grimaulkin.com\/ljacob-today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grimaulkin.com\/ljacob-today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}