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. Even trying to put the full list here has taken almost an hour. So, I’m giving up on that.
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 [↩]
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