Anyway, I have decided to follow The Unread Shelf this year for 2020. So far I've done well. I just made a few tweaks of my own.
The first thing she recommended is to count your unread books. I skipped this because I have so many books and they are all pretty much organized. 99% of my books are unread books because I rarely keep a book after reading it. Sometimes it might not leave the house but be given to another member of the house. Their libraries are separate but I try to keep track of them too in case I want to borrow a book: no sense in buying a book another family member already has. I keep track of them all on goodreads.com and just have made a shelf (which is just a tag) for each person's library. If I really wanted to I could go onto goodreads and probably get a total but I know there are a few duplicates that I haven't had the time to deal with. Anyway, since all of my unread books are separate and organized and I can look and see how them all I don't feel I need to know the total. I already know I have too many and have been working for the past several years to read through them and trying not to buy more.
The next thing was to choose a stack of books to make your priority for the year. I chose 13 of the oldest books on my TBR list and if I read them all I will just pick more for the same list. Here is a picture of my stack.
For the month of February the goal was to read gifted books but I had something else in mind. I picked 4 books that I needed to read but I didn't have. The first book was the oldest book on my TBR list but I couldn't find it. I am totally baffled as to where it could be but I know it is in my house somewhere. The other 3 books are books that are earlier in a series to other books on my TBR list so I needed to read them before I could read the other books on my list. I always read series books in order. I may not be truly OCD but even a Therapist/Counselor I had said I learned that way.
So here is my list of books to choose for February.
- Body Language by Julius Fast (reading slowly) Finished 2/21
- Sudden Prey (Lucas Davenport #8) by John Sandford Finished 2/17
- The Curse of the Pharaohs (Amelia Peabody #2) by Elizabeth Peters Finished 2/20
- The Barrakee Mystery (Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte #1) by Arthur W. Upfield Finished 2/22
I am happy that I did manage to read each of those so I could mark them off of my list even though I slept or otherwise felt ill so much of the month of February. I guess the one thing one can do in bed fairly easily is read. Of those books Sudden Prey was my favorite. I do like John Sandford's Prey series. I was surprised that I didn't have that one on my shelf since I have most of them. My least favorite was probably Body Language since it was so out of date but I did find a few nuggets that I enjoyed and after all I did finish it so it wasn't the worst thing. My next least favorite was The Curse of the Pharaohs. It was definitely not up my alley and I really hope the next book is better or I don't think I could keep going. The Barrakee Mystery was difficult to read because of the racist language but I know that is how things really were at the time. It still broke my heart to read. The story was interesting through and I read it fast but I was irked by some things at the end. I did write reviews for each of those books on the pages linked.
I am on goodreads as Donnawannaread so I'm not sure if my reviews show under my name Donna Capps or under Donnawannaread.
If you select the tap on my blog for books read this year you can see them all as pictures which are all linked to their goodreads pages.
