Yesterday was National Book Lover’s Day! I celebrated it by reading most the day :)
But then again, most days for me are book lover’s days, because I read constantly. It is a rare day I don’t read for at least a half hour when the sun is up. Most days I find myself reading for at least a couple hours unless my schedule is packed. It is my go-to decompressing tool! When I hit the sack, I always read myself to sleep. That can last anywhere from 15 minutes to several hours. Insomniac here!
In celebration of another year of book loving, I thought I’d talk about all the ways I find books to read. It sure makes it easy find the next thing to pick up and dive into! It can make it hard to choose just which book to settle in with, though :) Will you be more of a book lover on next year’s National Book Lover’s Day? Try these tips!
Here’s how I get my reading material these days:
1. I have a Samsung Galaxy tablet. Among its wonderful features, I have added both the Nook reading app (I borrow off my hubby’s Nook account) and the Kindle readng app. Shopping the Kindle “Top 100 Free” list at amazon.com every week or so keeps me supplied with an assortment of upcoming authors and a lot of Book-1-of-a-series — for free, so I can decide if I want to purchase more of them. 1-click ordering makes this super fast.
Beware, there are a lot of good writers/bad proofreaders. Poor sentence structure, bad punctuation habits, and misused homonyms can get annoying in some of these (many are self-published.) You can read Kindle books on your computer through Amazon’s cloud reader, too.
2. My new blog reader of choice, feedly.com. Since Google Reader was discontinued, I find myself adapting to feedly’s format fairly easily. Support your favorite bloggers! Read them! COMMENT on them! (hint hint)
3. Re-reading past favorites. We have a fairly large collection of favorite fiction books, mostly in paperback, that we choose to own and keep because they are RE-reading worthy! My favorite authors to re-read are Anne McCaffrey, Andre Norton, Orson Scott Card. I’m slowly making my way through these books that we will keep: the Outlander Series by Diana Gabaldon (mostly done — can’t wait for the movies!), and…
the Game of Thrones series by George R. R. Martin. (boxed set above, closeup)
4. The library. My husband is our house library coordinator. I just have to ask about a book, and he puts it on hold or gets on the waiting list for it. Spoiled me! If you ever meet him, just say yes if he asks about your library card status. Yes, you have one. Otherwise you may find yourself being escorted there, and being introduced to the online Book Request/Hold system. Just ask Sam LOL You may also find yourself asked to share said library card number, maybe, if your library has a good selection of e-books.
5. My mom. My mom loves to shop. My mom loves to read… like a book a day. Therefore, my mom buys books. She brings home books all the time and then we get them! This is my main source of current pop fiction. Then she takes them to the local used paperback store, where she has upwards of $1000 in credit. I wonder sometimes if she knows she can BRING BOOKS BACK OUT OF THAT STORE!?
6. Book recommendations or loans from my 2 daughters and my sisters. Blessed with a better reading list (and more interest in things not science-geeky) in high school and college, they are attracted more to literature-style current fiction. I read small doses of Nicholas Sparks (the Notebook, etc,) Jody Picoult (very emotional), plus things like Memoirs of a Geisha (thanks, Sam, for having that freshman English class assignment) and Wicked by Gregory McGuire (became the musical,) The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency (set in Africa, by Alexander McCall Smith,) and the Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver.
7. Online ordering! Eeeep! It’s a good thing my credit card number gets changed every 1-2 years and it takes me 6 months to memorize it. Once it is memorized it is Far Too Easy to click those buttons called “Add to Cart” and “Proceed to Checkout”!!!!! This is where I order my crafting and sewing books after reading reviews and recommendations on forums and blogs. And finding them on sale ;)
8. The bookstore. I am sad that so many bookstores, especially Borders, didn’t survive the recession. I realize my #7 is part of what put strain on them. As a consumer, it’s a hard trade-off between the convenience of online ordering (which I can do in my jammies) and go visit the bookstore (where THEY will make me coffee and sell me treats.) However, I rarely buy a cookbook without hands-on browsing at my LBS. I try not to drool on them.
BTW, the bookshelf peeking out in these pictures is full of JUST COOKBOOKS. :) Many of my cookbooks have never made it into the kitchen, but I use them for inspiration, education, and comparison, and dreaming.
Today I’m bouncing between cleaning, secret sewing, reading Marked by Elisabeth Naughton on my tablet Kindle app, Clash of Kings (Game of Thrones series,) and blogs.
Do you love to read? What do you love to read?
Gail
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