So, like any good bookworm, I set up a profile on Goodreads. … roughly an hour or two ago. Okay, maybe I’m not THAT good of a bookworm. Also, I am pretty sure I do have a profile, the login was either through Amazon or Apple or it didn’t survive the migration from 1Password. Whatever.
After confirming that yes, I do in fact own my own e-mail address, I was promptly invited to connect a Gmail account to find friends. Once I hit skip on that section, I was asked to set a reading goal for 2026. 20 books sounds like a good reading goal. That’s what I chose and that’s what I’m going to try to do this year. Next, genres! I’m just going to choose everything I write.
Simple. Now, time to find 20 books I’ve read and rate them. Easy, peasy right?
Finding Twenty Books I Actually Read (and can sincerely rate)
I’ll start with the first four books of the Jinx Baillou series by Dharma Kelleher. I haven’t read Red Market yet, but I want to.
And of course, Dreadnought. Let’s not forget Dylan Mulvaney’s autobiography, Paper Doll. And, then…
Shit. I don’t actually remember anything else I’ve read recently. I mean, I’m making it through Wool by Hugh Howey, but I don’t think I’ve finished any other book recently.
Let’s go to my bookshelf
Fuck, do I do more reading on TG Storytime than actual novels? Let me walk out to my actual bookshelf here in my apartment.
Okay, so I was able to add one book to my read count. Out of… 74.1 Fuck.
Wait, didn’t I buy a shitload of eBooks on Apple Books?
But wait! I have books in Apple Books. Granted, that’s not a great thing considering that I’m moving off the Apple ecosystem, but hey, if I read through them and decide what I’m replacing with physical copies, that’s not too terrible. Plus, if I see the covers, my memory will be jogged and we should easily get to 20, right?
… right?
Well, it looks like my list is full of books I downloaded a sample of as a means of creating a wishlist of books I intend to buy. Here’s a screenshot of a section of my Apple Books library to give you an idea:
Fuck, I can’t even say I read through Lust’s Latinum Lost (and Found). It’s broadcasting the fact that I only read through more than 40% of it. I am feeling… so disappointed in myself. But wait, there’s a “Finished” area. Let’s check there.
Not even Apple Books agrees with this list. Meander, Spiral, Explode is still listed as being only at 20% read. But, this didn’t help much.
But, I eventually got to twenty. Fairly.
I’m not happy with how long it took to get to twenty. However, that doesn’t change the fact that I identified twenty books that I actually read in the last few years.
Welp, anyway, I have a goodreads account now.
The solution?
Clearly, I need to read through everything I bought on Apple Books now. And I actually do have an external time pressure on doing this. Mostly because I’m planning to switch to Linux before the next major version of MacOS releases. And honestly, I could give you a whole list of books that I need to read through. But that list would be long. But… on the other hand, it would make it explicit.
Okay, I did try to compile the list just now. Even trying to put the full list here has taken almost an hour and I’m not even scrolled a quarter of the way through my Apple Books library. So, I’m giving up on that. Trust me when I say it’s a lot. I literally tried to create a GIF of me scrolling through the library quickly that was over a minute and that was 123MB. Needless to say, I can’t attach that to a blog post.
So, here’s the plan to read through what I have. First, I actually do need to read through the Silo series first. Mostly because I started Wool and I should finish the whole fucking series since I have it. Then, I’m going to start reading books on my iPhone. Both as a means of trying to change my screen time from watching YouTube and to make sure that I can before I send the MacBook to SellYourMac.
Because I can honestly say, attempting to list the whole ass list of books I have is going to take more than a year.
- Yes, that 74 includes the copy of Wool I have in my purse and the copy of The New Garçonne that I have on my nightstand [↩]
Be First to Comment