Comment by thoughtpalette | Hacker News Reader

Comment by thoughtpalette | Hacker News Reader

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I feel the same. Mainly use it for a platform to track what I've read. I do enjoy giving short reviews for books that call for them, but I don't make it a priority after completing a book. I'm a huge fan of the discovery (sci-fi/fantasy) for the next books for me to read, but there's been a number of times I've been interested in the summary only to be turned off by the reviews to the point where I'm reading review less and less. I feel like I've found joy in books others have not and to be influenced prematurely is a loss.

Will say I like the yearly reading challenge, if only for myself. Says the average challenge is 61/year, which, even for myself as a fast reader, seems high. Believe I'm ~30 books. I initially put my goal at 22 books.

I used to do reading challenges based on books read, but I found a better alternative: pages. If you focus on pages read, you don't have sunken cost while reading a book and you can stop reading if the book stops being interesting. Pages read is less satisfying, but I've found it gives me a better reading experience.

That's a great point. I did get into the Murderbot Diary novellas this year and it's unfair (by page count) that they count as full books in the challenge.

I will say, when I'm using my e-reader, I use a percentage as guidance for progress versus page count, so I almost no longer ever know how long my books are.

Those are awesome book, but short. From the time I started the first page of the first to the time after I finished them all and pre-ordered the next was maybe 9 days.

I've been aiming for 12 books a year for the last 5 years or so. Sometimes I'll go months without picking up a book, and the challenge is helpful for getting me back into it.

>I do enjoy giving short reviews for books that call for them

When I was in school, we called these book reports, and I'm pretty sure a number closer to 0 actually enjoyed them the least of which was me.

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