For the second year in a row now I’ve participated in GoodReads’ yearly Reading Challenge and for the second year I’ve managed to hit my personal target pretty much spot-on. Well, OK, last year I managed to read 23 out of 20 books but this year’s 25 out of 25 was well on-target.
The reason why I will continue participating is that it gently forces me to read which is a completely different kind of recreation from watching movies or playing video games for me. It is much more relaxing perhaps because it pulls me much deeper into a story than watching any movie could ever do. But what about the actual number of books to read? For me this somehow determines what books I’ll be reading. If the number is high (like this year’s 25) I’ll mostly focus on novels up to like 400 pages as I can usually finish one of these in 1.5-3 weeks (depending on the quality of the book).
Over the last couple of weeks I’ve noticed that I more and more enjoy reading technical literature again. I want to learn more. More new languages, more new tools, more new techniques; and tone down a little bit on the entertainment part. At first I thought about skipping next year’s challenge altogether simply to give me enough space. I don’t want to have to sprint through books just to reach a target that I might not even care for anymore at that point.
But then I remembered why I participated in these challenges in the past: They force me to relax, to actively look for quiet moments to recharge my batteries without getting bored. So for 2015 my personal reading goal will be 15 books. This way I will even manage to start (besides all that technical stuff) with Peter F. Hamilton’s latest novel and perhaps explore some longer stories by other authors I’ve put off for far too long :-)
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