The 2022 Reading Year
Jan. 12th, 2022 07:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shesingsnowLast year I set a goal of reading 50 books and I ended up reading 51.
Fifteen of the 51 were book summaries from Blinkist, all of them non-fiction business-type books. I count these because those types of books contain a lot of filler and the Blinks boil it down. I decided that I wasn't going to keep paying for Blinkist this year, although I'm still mulling over it because it's a decent source of mass business non-fiction. The cost of Blinkist for a year ($99) is certainly less than the cost of all of those books, but it is unlikely I would have bought all of those books, so I don't know as it's really a savings. Blinkist has the ability to send to my Kindle but I'm not crazy about clogging up the Kindle (it has enough on it for me to sort through), so I end up reading the Blinks via the app or on my computer.
However, I did some quick searching and SparkNotes is a now-free service that has a host of book summaries for classical-type mostly-Western literature, from Shakespeare to Gatsby and back. This morning I read a summary of Coriolanus - the plot architecture in two forms (list and paragraph) and the analysis. I've decided I'm going to count reading from SparkNotes, for this year. I don't have time in my life to read all of the books/plays I want to read, but I would like to revisit Shakepeare's plays and have a passing familiarity with a lot more "literature" than I currently do. The Crucible is a great example of a play I'd love to read but for which I will probably not make the time. Canterbury Tales is a great example of a book in that same vein - I should have stayed in the medieval English literature class in high school and I'd have read it.
I worked until 6pm last night. I'm suddenly in a new thing where I get called into 5pm meetings. My ego is happy for the attention and this bothers me, because my ego gets VERY UNHAPPY when I do not get such attention. NYAH.
Off to it, then.
Fifteen of the 51 were book summaries from Blinkist, all of them non-fiction business-type books. I count these because those types of books contain a lot of filler and the Blinks boil it down. I decided that I wasn't going to keep paying for Blinkist this year, although I'm still mulling over it because it's a decent source of mass business non-fiction. The cost of Blinkist for a year ($99) is certainly less than the cost of all of those books, but it is unlikely I would have bought all of those books, so I don't know as it's really a savings. Blinkist has the ability to send to my Kindle but I'm not crazy about clogging up the Kindle (it has enough on it for me to sort through), so I end up reading the Blinks via the app or on my computer.
However, I did some quick searching and SparkNotes is a now-free service that has a host of book summaries for classical-type mostly-Western literature, from Shakespeare to Gatsby and back. This morning I read a summary of Coriolanus - the plot architecture in two forms (list and paragraph) and the analysis. I've decided I'm going to count reading from SparkNotes, for this year. I don't have time in my life to read all of the books/plays I want to read, but I would like to revisit Shakepeare's plays and have a passing familiarity with a lot more "literature" than I currently do. The Crucible is a great example of a play I'd love to read but for which I will probably not make the time. Canterbury Tales is a great example of a book in that same vein - I should have stayed in the medieval English literature class in high school and I'd have read it.
I worked until 6pm last night. I'm suddenly in a new thing where I get called into 5pm meetings. My ego is happy for the attention and this bothers me, because my ego gets VERY UNHAPPY when I do not get such attention. NYAH.
Off to it, then.
