Introduction to Iberia Between last night and this morning I began to read Iberia by Michener and the introduction is pleasant. It takes us back to a time when people trailed by coal ship to Italy, before bouncing around and dropping into Spain to pick up oranges. The scene described within the first few pages is a nice one. It reminds us of an age that is long gone. The notion of ships picking up oranges, the spain of poor seaside towns that rely on fishing, or orange sales and more.
Recently I noticed that Audible is great for dummies. To be more specific I noticed that if you are an Audible paying subscriber you have access to dozens of Audible For Dummies books available within the subscription. They have books on goat keeping, bee keeping, ham radio and more available for us to listen to for “free” within the subscriptions that we have. This is great, not because we ever finish For Dummies books, but because we can read them for cheaper than usual.
I am confused by Apple reading goals because they measure how many days you have reached your goal, as well as how much you read for the current day, but once today is yesterday it loses all of that information. It tells you that you have a. streak but you have no way of knowing anything else.
It would be nice to know how many hours you read per week, as well as how this has varied from one week to the next, from one month to the next, and from one season to the next.
According to the Kindle app on my phone my longest Kindle Reading Streak was 126 days. I say “was”, because I lost it two days ago and now I am back to a one day reading streak. I hate that apps like Kindle count reading streaks as “days of reading in a row” because sometimes simply opening the app, and reading one page was enough to count it as a streak.
Yesterday I went for one of my usual one and three quarter hour walks and when I came into one village I noticed a green cupboard so I opened it and looked inside.
A green cupboard - “When I think of all the books I have yet to read, I feel happiness.”
From the quote on the front you would guess that it has something to do with books but I came from the side, and didn’t notice the writing until I had opened it.
We are one month into 2023 and so far I have read four books in four weeks. The aim of reading one book a week, so far is going well. I have read Last Book to Woodstock, A Man Called Trent and Riders of the Dawn as well as The Hunt for Red Octobre and The Cold Killer.
I have a tendency to buy and collect books faster than I read them.
I read using the Kindle App, with a specific account for over one hundred days before making the mistake of logging in with a different account, and moving the primary account to an older phone. I lost my streak and now I feel free.
Reading streaks are fantastic when the numbers are going up, and when you’re getting close to beating your record, and beat it. The drawback is that reading streaks, on one kindle account is a prison.
Recently I have read three out of four DI Barton books and I enjoy them. One of the things that I enjoyed about these books is that I’m interested in both sides of the story, rather than reading about character A but being frustrated when reading about character B. With these books I like both.
The first book is about a seasonal killer, and it moves on from there. I could give more information but I don’t want to spoil the books for you.
Earlier this year I set myself the challenge of reading 30 books this year and I have read 24 books out of 30 so far. In the grand scheme of things reading challenges don’t mean more. They mean you managed to start or at least finish a certain number of books within a given period of time.
I like the reading challenge because it encourages me to read more than I might otherwise but I am slightly frustrated that it doesn’t show the number of pages we have read in total, across various media.
I used to really like YouTube. It was a place where normal people could share videos of their normal lives, for normal people to enjoy, and to discover organically. Today YouTube is a way of forcing people to watch adverts before watching content that has been seen half a million to a million times by people with a million subscribers who keep saying “i have a million subscribers” and showing off.