Category: book lists

I am staying in pjs today

Because of the air quality, school was cancelled. With school being cancelled, my field trip today was cancelled, too. I am disappointed, but that’s going to give me a lazy day. I especially need it because I work Sunday this week.

I decided that I needed to read the book for tomorrow’s bookclub. It was in my bag. So, I went to pull it out and decided that I had too much stuff in my bag. I cleaned out my bag. I also started looking through The Book of Books. I bookmarked the books I’ve read, and the books I own but haven’t read, and the books that I still need to get my hands on. I stalled on the fifty shades of grey series, because I am not planning on picking them up again. I decided to not mark them at all.

I managed to get brunch into me. And emptied and loaded the dishwasher. And read part of tomorrow’s bookclub book. And got several things watched and deleted from the DVR.

I was a cat bed when I finished my book for bookclub tomorrow, and wrote its review. I was reminded about the Vegas bookclub book which is due Friday, and asked to catch up on my buddy read. The book for bookclub was a paper book, so I made arrangements to pass it on to a friend after bookclub is over.

I will be making progress on the Vegas bookclub today, and then I’ll cook some dinner. That’s as productive as I am getting today.

Back to basics challenges

The very basic start to reading is the alphabet. I have decided that I’m going to start a few new challenges, based on the basics, to make my reading a little more fun. I’ll be working on an alphabet challenge, a decades challenge, and a month challenge.

I want to do a prize winners challenge, too, but I think that will be just a few books.

I am going to continue my way through the Great American Read list. The BBC Big Read list is here.

The shorten the stack list will be ongoing. So will the annual goodreads challenge.

I’ll be explaining each of these more soon. I am not going to wait for the new year to start. I am starting today. Most of my book clubs don’t meet in December, so that’ll help keep me on track.

The link to these challenges will be here.

The anatomy of my book stack

I have named each part of the stack, because I can. I have stack one, which is to the left and is mostly hardback books and thicker paperbacks, because there is a window frame next to it. It’s less likely to fall over to the left because of this lip.

Stack two is in the middle. Is balanced on the vertical books that are on the actual bookshelf that you can’t really see. It has hardback books on the bottom for a base. Halfway up it has smaller paperbacks. I put a piece of cardboard on top of the small paperbacks to give it a little more of a base for stability. Then it goes to larger paperback books with a hardback or two in it. I plan on pulling it down and fixing it for stability. It’s on the to-do list.

Stack three is almost exclusively small paperbacks. Two of my kindle paperwhites sit here, too. They need to be charged. I also have a piece of cardboard in this stack, but its for attaching my book light to whatever I’m reading. The light is great for hardback books, but I need the cardboard for the light to be stable on the paperback.

The bookshelf section of the stack is under stacks two and three. On the right side of the shelving unit is a place to hold a charging hub. I have a small one on there, but it’s difficult to plug things in there. My fitbit charger, Garmin charger, and other chargers I don’t have to unplug often are plugged in there.

The middle section of the bookshelf has another charging him that is easily accessible. It has several vertical books, too. Only one of these books has stack two settled on it.

The left section of the bookshelf has another set of vertical books and an upright piece of cardboard. These books are the main base for stack two. The cardboard is for attaching the book light when I can’t get the light attached to my book for whatever reason.

Because not all books are the same size, my book stack has gaps. I keep things stuck in the gaps that’ll help me with my reading. My glasses have a little spot, between stack one and two. My Kindle oasis sits vertically between stacks two and three, and it can be charged while it sits there, since the hub and cable are right underneath it. My book light lives just under stack two in a little gap on the left side vertical books. On the little, nearly useless shelves on the right side of the bookshelf, I keep my earplugs and a couple of boxes of small bookmarks.

The tv remotes live in front of stack three. These aren’t helpful for reading, but they live there. My medication, dress watch, and retainer case live on the tiny shelf, too.

Goodwill trip

My daughter and her friend decided to go to Goodwill after my daughter and I went to lunch and the pet store. They asked me to come along. I found some books that I needed. A couple were on the Great American Read list. A couple were books I had waiting on my goodreads list. One was the third in a series I’m working on, but I don’t have book two yet. I stopped myself from browsing when I got to ten books. I have some self control.

Is that your real stack of books?

I was chatting with a friend who was reading Bookwormatthegym for the first time. She saw the photo of my books while browsing and I was telling her that I am not buying new books.  She didn’t understand about why I would limit my book purchases until she saw the photo.  Yes.  That’s really the stack.  Yes.  It was taken a couple of weeks ago, so the stack is bigger now.  I have a problem.  I am working on it.  This is one of my goals for 2019.  To have my stack of unread books shorter than I am.