Reading Current: 05/20/18

When I took my love of reading online I realized just how much of the social aspects of reading are with reading and discussing whatever is new. Of course in the book blogging community, there is another level of participation through the reviewing of arcs and egalleys. That part I'm not interested in, but being aware of and being able to talk intelligently about what's recently in print, is something I want to do.

Last year when faced with the reality of a move (first believed to be international, and then locally) and the need to put 90% of our family's possessions into storage for half a year or more meant that I couldn't do what I usually do — namely read through a mixture of library books and older books I had on hand. So I turned to newly purchased ebooks, read on my phone or my computer.

During the time we were sojourning in an apartment while we sold our condo and bought a house, I settled on the review schedule I'm using now where Saturdays are the day I review a newly published book. I also have days dedicated to Canadian books, mysteries, graphic novels, and road narrative books.

This year I as I realized I was nearly through my years' long backlog of reviews and could realistically be facing a time when I had at most a month's worth of books to review at any given time (rather than half a year's worth or more), I started optimistically populating my review schedule with newly published books or upcoming books into these other categories (newly published Canadian books, newly published mysteries, newly published graphic novels, and newly published road narrative books).

And that's where I'm hitting my biggest mental block. I am feeling overwhelmed some weeks when facing two or three newly published books that I've decided I will read and review. I'm still trying to balance out the excitement of these new books with my more laid backlist approach to reading. In the past I've been able to schedule out reviews for half a month at a time and now I'm at two months at a time because if I try to schedule everything else in, I'll feel trapped by a reading or reviewing schedule, and that's not the purpose of my schedule.

What I've reviewed this year by year published.

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