Isn't this supposed to be fun?

That didn't last long. It was nice to be at 147 for a few days, but I'm already back up to 149 after buying two Culture books, Look to Windward Surface Detail, over the last week or so. This leaves me with a net gain of 10 books for 2018. That's not great, but it's also not horrible. I'm not likely to finish Martin Chuzzlewit (or any other book I own) before the end of the year so that's where I will end up for 2018, at least when it comes to making progress towards Book Shelf Zero.

I will finish at least one more book before the end of the year. I'm close to finishing Skyward, a new book by Brandon Sanderson. It's a library ebook that I'm reading on my Kindle. I did a quick finish of Asymmetry, another library book, to load it onto the Kindle a day before my loan expired. I almost bailed on it, but I read just enough in the give it one more try session that I got sucked into the story. It's not anything fantastic, but it's fun and I want to find out what happens. He acknowledges that this was just a fun side project for him around the massive Stormlight Archives titles so I wasn't expecting anything mind-blowing going in. I convinced my son to get the first book in one of his other YA series so this may be a space that I explore more fully in the coming year.

Asymmetry is the only book that I've finished since wrapping up Hydrogen Sonata. Another book from the 21st Century Canon, another library book. It was a decent enough book, but it just tried too hard. It was full of the serious literary intent that makes too many contemporary books flaccid and unappealing. The first and third sections were very good, but the middle section, a novella later revealed to be written by a character in the first section, was cliche and boring. I'm sure this won't be the last time I feel this way about a book from that list. It was short and I didn't buy it so it's not like it was a huge lose (and a good chunk of the book was worth reading).

I'm getting a bit fatigued by this whole Book Shelf Zero endeavor. It's been a fun challenge, but I'm feeling like I am betraying my reading by making it a means to an end rather than the act of reading being the point of reading a book. My reading has been about crossing a title off of some list rather than being about the pleasure of an entertaining story or the appreciation of a beautiful passage. I set up these little tasks around so many aspects of my life. My Epic Quest spreadsheet that started as a bit of a lark to get me to do ab exercises and get to the gym to lift weights is an uncomfortably central aspect of my life.

I track all of my reading in the Epic Quest spreadsheet. I note my completed books in Goodreads too, but the spreadsheet is where all meaningful activities are recorded. It's where I tracked my marathon training and how many miles I've run, meters I've rowed, how many days I've been to the gym, did ab work, and recorded 10,000 steps. I'm about to finish my third year of recording all of this stuff. All of these activities earn me points. This has been my best points year by far. This approach is effective, but it's not very rewarding. I'm in a race against myself. It gets old after a couple years.

Book Shelf Zero has been effective in it's primary task of making me closely consider every book purchase. I've been close to buying the rest of the Culture series just to have them on hand. There were some good options in today's Daily Deals (the Grant bio and the new Murikami book were very tempting), but I couldn't give up on the idea of Book Shelf Zero. The few dollars that I would save by buying the books on sale weren't worth pushing my to be read number back up above 150. I have a vague recollection of stating that I would be comfortable with about 10 books of progress a year. I would hate to undermine that progress, even if it is making reading feel like a secondary task, than just throw up my hands and splurge on a few books.

If the library had all of the Culture books available as ebooks my progress would have been several books better. Of the 10 books I bought this year, 6 of them are Culture books. The discovery of the ease of getting ebooks from the library was a huge drag on Book Shelf Zero (but a boon to making it through those lists of worthy books on which to spend my valuable reading time). Of the 43 books I have read this year, 23 of them were library books. Of the 20 owned books that I read this year, 6 of them were books that I bought this year. So I read 14 books this year that I owned at the beginning of the year, and most of those I read in the first half of the year.

So I'm chiding myself for reading a series that I really enjoy because I have had to purchase many of the books and lamenting easy, free access to a huge library of books because I have been able to read all kinds of interesting and entertaining books on my phone or Kindle rather than laboring through the books I already own. This is exactly why I'm feeling fatigued by this whole Book Shelf Zero thing. I've had a great reading year, but I have spent much more time reading new stuff rather than plodding through more of Martin Chuzzlewit (an enjoyable read but not as fun as Skyward or something else I picked up from the library). Lighten up and live a little for crying out loud. Stop taking yourself and your silly little challenges so damn seriously!

Finally 147!!!!

After months of having my to be read number bouncing back and forth between 148 and 149, I have finally pushed it down to 147. The Hydrogen Sonata, the Culture book I let my wife talk me into buying when it was a Kindle Daily Deal, got the honor of being the book that gave me my first bit of progress towards Book Shelf Zero in several months. I always go into those Iain Banks books thinking they will be quick reads only to have them go on for weeks and weeks. I thought I would make it through Excession on vacation (I had a week) and failed (despite all the extra reading time I picked up at the beach thanks to crappy weather). The latest Culture book was also something I thought would go quickly only to have it take weeks to read.

The Hydrogen Sonata is the tenth Culture book. This one fits the formula pretty well. A central conflict is set up, the Minds gather to discuss, a human is pulled in, and the event unfold to a neat conclusion. It was a fun read despite repeating a formula very similar to Excession (which is actually referenced, kind of unusual in a series where each book's story is largely independent of what happened in the other books). I'm eager to move on to another Culture book, but I have to finish another of my owned books before I will buy one of the four Culture novels I still need to read. I want to push my to be read number lower still before I make another book purchase.

That next book will be Martin Chuzzlewit. I set this latest attempt to read another Dickens book aside while I read The H Sonata. I have read 20 pages or so in the few days since finishing the Culture novel. It's a bit of a drag at this point, but I'm still really early in the novel (yes, even a quarter of a way through the book I'm still in the early stages by Dickens standards). I know that it will pick up and read quickly once all the scenarios are in place. I just hope I can get there before the year ends. I still have a long way to go in the novel. I expect to have a pretty slow week at work. I have the ebook version of the novel in my work phone. I may use time just sitting at my desk to read a bit. A hundred or so pages read at work would make a big difference in finishing this one by the end of the year. (Thinking about reading a Dickens book at work reminds me of reading the climax of Bleak House on a computer while I was in grad school.)

Asymmetry will be a drag on finishing my Dickens book for this year. This is a much more engaging novel. It's also short and easy to read. The dialogue is so natural and the story moves despite much in the way of detail. The politics are predictably annoying, but the writing is worth overlooking the predictable liberal worldview of the central characters. This is a book I will definitely finish before the end of the year. I'm currently at 42 books read in 2018. I would like to hit 45. We'll see if that happens.