reading-with-a-view

[reading-with-a-view]

my toxic trait is requesting library books faster than I can read them

[reading-with-a-view]

Here are some interesting facts about books:

1. Harvard University Library has four books bound in human skin.

2. Iceland tops the world in per capita book reading.

3. People who read books are less likly to develop Alzheimer’s disease.

4. In Brazilian prisons, reading a book can reduce a prisoner's sentnce by four days.

5. Virginia Woolf wrote all her books while standing.

6. The most stolen book is the Bible.

7. Roosevelt read an average of one book per day.

8. There are over 20,000 books written about chess.

9. Victor Hugo’s "Les Misérables" contains a sentence with 823 words.

10. Words like "hurry" and "addiction" were invented by Shakespeare.

11. If all the books in the New York Public Library were lined up, they would stretch 8 miles.

12. Leo Tolstoy's wife hand-copied the manuscript of "War and Peace" seven times.

13. Noah Webster took 36 years to write his first dictionary.

14. The Mahabharata is the only book or epic in the world with over 1,200 characters.

[reading-with-a-view]

would anyone wanna do a readathon next week?

say from, the 24th to the 30th? in your own time zone, to keep it simple

basically we would just be trying to read as much as we can over the week, sharing updates, reviews, photos etc. and chatting amongst ourselves as we go

reblog if you're interested and if we get a nice contingent together, I'll make up a tag for us to use ^.^

[reading-with-a-view]

bingewatching will never come close to bingereading. there is nothing like blocking out the entire Earth for ten hours to read a book in one sitting no food no water no shower no bra and emerging at the end with no idea what time it is or where you are, a dried-up prune that's sensitive to light and loud noises because you've been in your room in the dark reading by the glow of a single LED. it's like coming back after a three-month vacation in another dimension and now you have to go downstairs and make dinner. absolutely transcendental

[reading-with-a-view]

Another cloudless summer day

[reading-with-a-view]

I am very good at finding the view and very bad at remembering to bring a physical book, but today I remembered!

[reading-with-a-view]

Destroy the myth that libraries are no longer relevant. If you use your library, please reblog.

[reading-with-a-view]

The pathway next to Trident Coffee and Novo Brewing in Imperial Beach is so lovely and there are birds and you can sit on a bench and read while surrounded by nature ahh

[reading-with-a-view]

There is half of me that loves and needs this so bad and the other half of me that's ravaged by consumerism and an unhealthy drive towards achievement. May the best side win

How about in 2024 we stop it with reading books with the goal in mind to finish the book so you can add it to your list of read books and start reading books slowly and intentionally with the goal to rip it into pieces with your mind and be touched by it and formed by it and changed by it

[reading-with-a-view]

[reading-with-a-view]

Love storygraph!! This was a very good explanation and breakdown of the features

Hey! I've been looking for an alt to goodreads and I saw your tags on a post. How is your experience with StoryGraphs?

Hi! I am so, SO happy with Storygraph!

I don't know what your Goodreads feelings are, but I am a librarian who used to do a fair amount of reviewing, and at some point I just got so stressed about reading. I don't think that's uncommon, with booktok, etc. that people just start feeling like they need to 'keep up,' reading multiple books a week, reading the books that are on the lists, reading them before they go out of style, and to me reading should never get like that. Somewhere during quarantine, I basically stopped reviewing, deleted almost all of the book-related social media accounts I followed, and switched to Storygraph, and I finally started to slow down, appreciate the process, and I love reading again (I actually did this with almost all my hobbies, knitting, sewing, etc.). My initial attraction was that it was not a big corporate company and I really liked the owner. Nadia is SUPER communicative in her newsletters and really great about incorporating changes that people are asking for (also a black woman, so minority owned!).

First, you can import your Goodreads data. I know a lot of people don't like switching tools because of the work, but it imported everything, including reviews, and was extremely accurate.

Also, the interface is much simpler, no ads, and no infinite scrolling, which I love! There is a subscription version, which I'd like but can't really justify rn.

This is the home screen on desktop (it's adaptable to mobile):

and this is my profile page:

You can have friends, but totally don't have to, I didn't for ages and now keep the number pretty low. That page is totally secondary, not part of the home screen like on GR. You can see what friends have reviewed, but you have to click into that, rather than just flooding your feed.

You can also do buddy reads, which I'm really excited to try (maybe when @outtoshatter stops writing her behemoth fic :P). Like here you can see under the cover, 1 person has interacted with it:

A few of my other favorite things before I start talking about the stats, are first the content warnings. These are all user added and aggregated. if you click "SEE ALL" you can see how many people voted for what:

There are also still both goals and reading challenges, I don't do challenges, for the reasons listed above, but this is what that looks like, and the goals just fill in automatically:

I don't use the recommendations since I get enough at work, but I've mostly heard people are really happy with it. It uses a form rather than just an algorithm so you can put in what you want and don't want. This is mine from a few years ago when I was testing the feature so you can get an idea of what they ask for:

Okay FINALLY favorite part is obviously the stats page. You can search by year or all time, and if you have the Plus version you can compare two time periods (I would love to see my reading habits from when I was at the public library to now working at an academic library...or maybe I don't, hmm). But it tracks everything, including rereads which really like. I'm just going to screentshot my whole set from this year so far because I think that's easier to see. I don't really use some of these, but I love looking at genres and the pages/books chart to see trends:

I'll stop there, but totally bug me with questions! I am a huge fan, obviously!

[reading-with-a-view]

I like having a goal to motivate me (it's one of the few "new years resolutions" I can even stick to) but I've definitely had years where I was reading things just to get through them and hit a number. I realized that defeats the purpose of why I enjoy reading, which is to learn and enjoy stories, so over time I have set my goal lower so I'm reading for reasons that make me happy.

I recognize that I read a lot more than the average person (50-80 books a year) but part of that is because I hardly watch TV/movies, I try to stay off social media, and I'm very introverted. All that time adds up to more reading time, although I do miss out on other forms of entertainment because of that. I also read a variety of books, some of which are easier to read than others (summer romance vs Tolstoy).

On the flip side, I'm nowhere near folks who read hundreds of books a year and I sometimes feel behind when I see other book-internet people talk about their stats. Everyone has different preferences and reading speeds, but sometimes the book community can feel very consumerist not just in how fast we read books, but also the way we purchase them (book hauls etc).

At the end of the day, read what you want, when you want to, in a way that fulfills you, not a version of you created for others' validation.

The day before yesterday I was looking at statistics about reading habits in different countries (average book count per year, age, most read genre, etc) and then yesterday i came across a poll here asking how many books youve read so far this year and now im wondering:

The highest I saw (not just in that poll's tags but on other socials as well) was 365! With the person in question being a lil under 300 rn.

The lowest (and no shame here! I myself have picked up reading again after a long time and it's quite the challenge) was 1! But I also saw lots of people aim for 5.

The average seems to be anywhere around 30 to 60!

And the second most common bracket (interesting that it's also the one made up of mostly late teens and early 20yos) is 10-30!

Idk if anyone will read this but if u do, id love to know more about your thought process in the tags!

(Just pls be kind to each other and no fucked up elitism lol)

[reading-with-a-view]

Reading is going really well tonight, thanks for asking

[reading-with-a-view]

reject booktok culture. go to the library and get a weird little novel you’ve never heard of in your life and read it all in 2 days like god intended.

[reading-with-a-view]

Story graph is the shit! I hardly understand why people still put up with Goodreads being extremely broken when Story graph is just so much better

It's called: StoryGraph

This is better then Goodreads(still use it cause goal)

But I am am loving this app. Very useful, you can track pg,how many books you are reading, and how many you want to read.

My goal this year is to finish most of my tbr list by December. ( Not realistic, but hey, it's a goal for ME! )

[reading-with-a-view]

Ok hear me out. Is there nowhere to sit except the ground or a good rock? Maybe. Is the sun a deadly laser? Perhaps. But books can be read anywhere, especially in a field of wildflowers

[reading-with-a-view]

I'm a sucker for cute expensive coffee shops