Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Weekly Geeks 2009.44: Reading Habits


Trisha at Eclectic/Eccentric asks a bunch of questions about our reading habits for Weekly Geeks this week. I'm going to attempt to answer, though I think I really have no method to the madness.

How do you choose what to read? Is it random or planned? Based on your mood, challenges, titles, covers, topic?

I try to have a bit of a mixture. I try to get stuff read for challenges, and book club, and what's due at the library. But MUCH of how I choose to read next is based on mood. And hopefully I'll never lose that, because it's really fun that way I think. I rarely base my decision on a cover, sometimes a title if everyone is talking about it... and topic... not so much these days.

What process do you use for reading? Do you take notes while reading? Annotate your books? Just read?

Just read for me. No note taking. I've always thought it would be fun to mark my thoughts in the book, but I've never actually done this.

What happens when you are done reading? Do you wait to review or write immediately? Do you revisit and revise before posting?

I wait a bit to review it... a day or two maybe unless life is especially crazy. I don't spend a ton of time on reviews because I don't want to be stressed out or bogged down with them. I just want to let people know what my reaction is and keep them simple and easy.

What other tasks do you go through after reading a book? Is your blog the only place you post a review? Do you keep lists of readings? Catalog genre, page numbers, gender of authors, etc.?

I have a notebook where I simply list the books I've read. I used to write my thoughts in a sentence or two, but even that was too hard. So I just list a couple of things there like pages, date read, genre, if I read it for a challenge or book club, and a rating. Oh, and I mark it read on Goodreads and add a one or two sentence review/reaction.

What happens to the book when you are done with it? Does it end up in your home library? Go back to a public library? BookMooch?

Books I own end up in my home library. There are many readers at our house and someone else is bound to read it! If I don't feel too attached, I may add it to my Paperbackswap account. Many books are library ones too.

Overall, if you had to give someone a "How To" list for your dealings with any particular book, what would it look like?

1. Buy book, or borrow from library.

2. Sit it on the TBR shelf for a long time.

3. Read it when it is almost due... or when it's turn for a challenge arises, or when the mood strikes.

4. Share reading time with several other books.

5. Haul it all over the place.

6. When finished, log it in a notebook and add to Goodreads.

7. Blog about it before you forget what you thought!

8. If lucky, talk about it with some real live people in your real live life.

9. Start new book right away. There's no time to waste!

10. Repeat.


So...what would YOUR list look like?

1 comment:

  1. I just started trying to take notes before (or right after) I read. I feel like it's been helping my reviews a lot, since I usually have a pretty big gap between when I read the book and when I get around to reviewing it. I like #9 and #10 on your list :)

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