The end of the year is always kind of interesting for me, especially with bloggers. People summarize their year, throw shout outs to whoever they think was awesome during the previous year and… undoubtably, some of them will write a list of books they plan to read.
I don’t schedule or plan like that. It’s impossible for me to as I’m generally one of those readers who reads based on current mood (which is why I generally always have 3-4 books going at once – one for each of my “major moods” at that time). I have books I hope to get to next year, but I can’t say, “I will read these books.” I’m too unorganized – or something. However, I know some people do “schedule” their reading. For example, “I will read (insert title) in (insert month) because that’s the date it comes out/whatever other reason.”
Do you preplan your list books to read, or schedule months to read certain books? Or are you spontaneous and go with your mood?
8 Responses
I usually go by mood and rarely read more then one book at a time. However lately over the last year or so I seem to have planned reads – whether deciding to read a book with someone else. I rarely do the whole book pile rummage any more as I've decided what to read next about 100 pages before I finish my current book.
I had goals for books to read, but I only made about half of them. I always have a pile I want to get to, but then get distracted so easily I don't know why I do it.
I'm entirely spontaneous when it comes to the books I read. I've tried planning out which books I'll tackle in a given week, or month, and something always comes along to spoil that plan. Whether it's life getting in the way, or just finding another book I want to read more, something always throws my schedule off, and then I'm just left feeling bad for not following through on my self-imposed obligations.
Over the past couple of years, I have scheduled reading over the months of November and December, but they have failed horrible. I do not respond well to setting goals. If anything, it puts me off doing the thing I want to do. Mood ruined.
I'm too spontaneous when it comes to reading; I really need a proper schedule in my life. One thing I will say is that I'm going to do my best to read more books on Kindle next year. I find my reading pace slows to a crawl on the kindle, which is odd.
I have a 50 book a year goal and when I reach it, I stop. I usually have around 30 books already queued up for the next year with very few that get dropped – usually if a series turns bad for me. The rest get added as current books come out.
This has worked well for me for the last 3 years when I started this to get through my to read pile and still give me a few months to do other things.
I attempt to do something approaching scheduling fairly often, but I'm rather rubbish at it. I need choice, selection. When I go on vacation I bring twice the books I need, then half the time stop at a bookstore on arrival, buy far too many to fit in my suitcase, and just read those. At this point, I've enough books in my towering, soon to fall over and kill me TBR pile that I'm no longer even good at getting to highly anticipated releases. Just a few days ago I read The Hammer, and that's a book I pre ordered months before it came out back in January and waited for with bated breath.
I schedule my reading according to this whim or that, if that makes any sense. Right now, I'm rereading a couple of beloved series because I had a sudden urge to revisit them, but I've interspersed other things according to additional whims. It's entirely possible I'll lose interest in the rereads, too, and decide to leave them for another time.
I also have loose, whim-based plans to reread tons of Canadian novels in January, since there are scads of Canadian authors I've been meaning to reread and it makes sense to set aside a whole month for them; however, I shan't establish an order for my reading, and I'm willing to shift things around if I'm suddenly in the mood for something else.