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As I am sure you have gathered, I am an avid reader.
I will admit that I get a little anxiety when I am, what I call, "running out of pages."
This is when I know I will soon finish a book but I don't have another one waiting for me. And if I do finish without another one lined up, I feel noticeable anxiety.
Anyone else have this issue?
Yes, so I always have another one lined up. If I'm going to be spending time in a waiting room or something, and I'm more than half-way through my book, I'll often bring another for backup.
That hasn't been a problem for me. I always seem to have a backlog on the shelf or the kindle. My main constraint is available time.
I never worry about running out of pages, although I do feel the distress of deciding which book/series/author to try next. I have over 5000 electronic books, each in two formats (epub and mobi) sitting on a server in my home. This enables me to call up any selection I desire on any electronic device from wherever I may be when it becomes time to start another.
I'm currently working on the 'Captain Alatriste' novels by Spanish author Arturo Perez-Reverte. My dilemma resides in who or what to read next.
What about reading weekly or monthly book reviews online and making a list of books that have twigged some response or curiosity? I have been told by several readers that they find that they have to read a book twice to fully understand the thought behind the book. Have you ever thought or done that?
I only feel that way when I have a really good book, usually a novel. i havent read a really good book for a couple of years. The last one was The Goldfinch.
But then,
I havent been reading fiction latelh, jave been skimming non ficition. That is not satisfying reading.
Me - that's me too! I have always described myself as a "chain reader", when I finished a book I had to have another one waiting to start. Once, several years ago, I did run out one night with nothing else to read and I remember wandering around the apartment where we lived then feeling the mild anxiety you mentioned. I somewhat felt like an addict not knowing where their next fix/drink/cigarette was coming from. Let me say, THAT has never happened again! My husband also was a reader and we always joked that when snow was in the weather forecast and everyone was hitting the grocery stores, we headed for the library to stock up! Sometime we would come across book sales, used book stores etc. and DH would say we needed to get some "emergency books". Now I am sitting here with our second snowstorm in a week, I can barely see the tip end of my antenna sticking out of the top of my little car. BUT, I have BOOKS!!! I will be okay.
Get the Autobiography of Mark Twain in three volumes. At 3000 tediously tiny pages of font you might be working puzzles in the community center by the time you get done. Or as an atheist, you might try the King James Version of the Bible. Might give up reading altogether and never have this problem again.
I keep a notebook of books I want to read and always try to have several on hold at the library. Mild anxiety if I don't have something to read - like now - when the roads are icy and I can't get out. Don't like reading e-books - otherwise that would work.
I do have a small number of ebooks loaded on my IPAd, ones I think will be very good.Quote:
Originally Posted by pinkytoe
Its not that I dont have books to read, I just cant settle in to start with a good novel, and I am deeply skeptical about most of them being any good, anyway. The good ones take time to sink into them.
That is where I am with movies and tv shows these days, very few productions are super
interesting to me. So, I find myself watching schlock, stuff that is repetitious and formulaic. Ugh.
www.gutenberg.org/
Your not running out of pages, your ignoring available/free resources, having anxiety over something you can anticipate and control.
I have enough books on Kindle to last me well beyond this life. Many will prove to be clinkers, but I have enough variety to satisfy any mood for a long, long time.
In the past I went through each stack in the library book by book taking home every one that interested me. That project took a few years. You can also create an Amazon account, search for and click on books you like, and it will recommend similar ones for you. Then I look for those at the library. You could also start reading magazines.
I don't have that problem. Like others I have the opposite, I'd have to quit my job if I wanted to even have a chance of reading everything I want to. I prefer my books in dead tree format, so I have several lists of books I want to read on my library account (broken out by fiction and non-fiction by topic) and as I start getting low on pages I move a few from the future reading lists to the hold list and they start showing up on the holdshelf at the library for me. I'm also adding books to the lists on a regular basis. Right now I'm about as low on pages as I've been in years, but two books are waiting on the holdshelf for me: Dreamland: the true tale of America's opiate epidemic by Sam QUinones, Naked Lunch by William S Burroughs and Strange contagion: Inside the surprising science of infectious behaviors and viral emotions and what they tell us about ourselves by Lee Daniel Kravetz. Fire and fury: inside the Trump White House is also on hold but I'm 264 out of 1125 holds for roughly 8 that the library already owns and another 225 they have on order, so it'll be a while before I get that one.
Oh, I'm a reading addict, for sure. I love good books, but if only crap is available, I may read that too, until I have a chance to get something better. Not reading for an extended period - more than a day-makes me feel unsettled - almost physically ill. I do re-read; I visit the Shire off and on, and I have a few other old favorites -some Dickens, Twain, Alan Eckert, Christie. They will keep me going until I get to the library. Of course I'll never have time to read everything I wanted, but I do get the anxiety of not having something to read. But I can think of many worse things than books to be addicted to (said from the worst county in the worst state for opioid overdoses)!
I worry about not having anything good to read too. It has to be really engaging and well-written.
I work in a library so you'd think I would always be prepared but sometimes it feels like I have read everything.
One of my favorite quotes:
"The flesh is sorrowful, alas! And I've read all the books."
--Mallarme
Argh... I feel like I am running out of pages!
I have the opposite problem. I'll run out of heartbeats before I run out of pages.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ultralight
UL, does your library offer the apps Hoopla and Library2go?
Hoopla has all the classics (plus a large selection of new crap with the occasional gem.) It's saved me quite a few times.
Free of charge, of course, and also clutter free.
I am on Goodreads and for the life of me, I can’t get my To Read List under 100. Since I get as many books from the library as possible, when I get halfway through a book, I put one of my To Read books on hold at the library.
I recently listened to Dear Fahrenheit 451 with a resulting increase of 10 books on my To Read List.
IL: the author of Dear Fahrenheit 451 really, really liked The Goldfinch too.
I just got a Kindle Paperwhite and wonder what took me so long. Already have lots in the queue. Currently reading and loving The Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse. Up next, three Jules Verne classics plus some ebooks from the public library.
Of all the e-reading choices, I prefer Kindle PC--nice big pages, covers in color...I would enjoy the Paperwhite more if it were bigger. On the plus side, it's feather light, and though it's not as intuitive as some, I like that I can slip it in a pocket. If there's a way to organize titles by genre, I haven't found it yet. I get lots of downloadable library books.Quote:
Originally Posted by Oddball