In May 2020, I made a commitment to read for at least 10 minutes every day, and this challenge has had a big impact on my life. I have gained self-...
For further actions, you may consider blocking this person and/or reporting abuse
Thanks for sharing this. It's funny, I myself did the same commitment (30 minutes a day of reading for me) 4 months ago. I've already read 12 books, including some classics I'd always wanted to read (Anne Franck, Lord of the flies, etc.). That's the real beauty of this habit: you read things that you always had planned for later because now that you read a lot, every 3 to 10 days, you have to pick a new book and it's easy to pick an old classic because you know that even if it doesn't tempt you too much, you'll only read it in a few days before moving on to a book that was more tempting.
For my part, I've put everything on a Google Sheet (including when I started and finished the book, my review, etc.). I included a column for if the book appears in at least two lists of Great books to have read in your life (or the 100 greatest books, whatever), and I've skimmed many of these kind of lists. I also give a note out of 10 so that I can recommend books quickly. And I've put a dropdown list to indicate if it's a Fantasy book, a Self help book, a Biography, etc.
I have yet to plug my Google Sheet to an API like Goodread to be able to retrieve more info easily, like books cover or publication date.
Last but not least: it's such a pleasure to pick the next book, it's amazing. And you feel great by having an habit that make you happy/smarter/more confident.
Wow, awesome! The google sheet is indeed an easy and effective way to track everything :)
As much as I agree that picking the next book is a great feeling, I must admit it also became a burden in the past months. Finding original books is hard when you read a lot, and it takes some time! I usually try to keep a backlog in case I finish a book faster than expected and don't have the time to research another one.
I am reading on an e-reader (I use Calibre to manage the library btw). This is maybe why it is so hard: when switching to digital, you basically have everything at hand, which is quite overwelming compared to going to your favorite bookshop. And you, do you read paperbacks? Any good book to recommend?
Hello Lucy!
I read paperbacks for now because I have acquired lots of them, and my wife told me that as long as I had not read all of the books at home, I wouldn't get a Kindle ;)
That's perhaps why it is indeed easier and fun to pick each next book to read: my personal library is filled with book I've been dying to read for a long time, and I have scores of them. When I'll switch to Kindle, my google sheet list with books that I've been advised to read or coming from the Top books lists that I've reviewed, will help a lot.
To find great new books, the other advice I would give is to ask some friends, colleagues or library sellers what are the 3 books they love the most, or the ones that changed their life or were just mind blowing or too fun to put down.
Books I would recommend to anyone (read sometimes many times):
Musk biography (by Vance, I think)
The name of the wind (Rothfuss)
Ender's Game (Orson Scott Card)
Flowers for Algernon (Daniel Keyes)
Rhapsody (Elizabeth Haydon)
Harry Potter (1 to 4, disliked the 3 last ones)
Sapiens (Harari)
The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
The Ice People (René Barjavel). La nuit des temps in french (I'm French by the way)
Atlas shrugged (Ayn Rand)
The road to serfdom (Hayek)
Not without my daughter (Betty Mahmoody and William Hoffer)
The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
Wizard's first rule (Terry Goodkind)
1984 (Orwell)
Don't hesitate to share your favorites too!
Happy reading!
Frédéric
Such an interesting and inspiring experience !
I didn't know reading "trackers" where a thing. Since I also want to read more, I will definitely try them 😄
I am curious, do you use the Boosted app that you mentionned for other activities ? Would you recommand it ?
So happy to hear it!
I only use Boosted to track hobbies. I have the premium version so I can export everything as CSV for my stats. For work, I use work log instead, which I find more suitable. And yes, I recommend it!
Try serial reader!
I didn't know about serialreader.org/ (Android + iOS app), that is an interesting product! I personally love the freedom of reading as much (or as little) as I want, but this may be beneficial to others, thanks for sharing!
Wonderful... By creating new habits we can create useful data to help us in the evaluation of how these habits are running... But at the heart is the commitment itself ... Thnx for sharing your experience..
I am more interested in the GitHub repo, can you make it more general [ or if you need help with that, I can help! ], so that people can fork it and use it for themselves.
That's an interesting idea!
Right now, the CSV format for the data is already quite generic - except for the meta.json which is tight to MyBooks. It is only used to link book titles to GoodReads, so we could do without.
For the code though, to be honest it was more like a toy project to try react, and I am quite displeased with the performance (especially the loading time). To work with CSV/DataFrames, I used Danfo.js, but it is quite a poor alternative to Python Pandas (that I used in my first version of the site, still available at derlin.github.io/reading-challenge/). I would thus definitely need some help to improve on this side.
If people are interested in collaborating on this, I would be thrilled to prepare a base on GitHub and start the discussions! Let me know :)
Cool, I am interested!
Give me till Monday I'll go through the repo.I think I missed the point, just to confirm, is there a code repo for this?
From the top of my head, we can make it RESTful, I can work on the backend.
Forgot it was still private. I will notify you as soon as I find 5 minutes to change this 😊
I would personally like to keep it static, so we can use netlify or github pages to deploy it for free. What do you think?
With some googling Netlify looks better choice, so I think we should use netlify, now the only thing left is to learn it!!😅
But I am up for a challenge!👊🏾
I haven't had time to clean it up or even add a Readme (I am currently abroad for work), but it is now public at least. We can continue the discussion on github 😊 github.com/derlin/reading-stats
Awesome!!
Good read! I agree with you.
Thank you Lucy for sharing that. I have to say I have a similar experience, meaning, used to read a lot and then got burried in work....long story and I aback on track with reading now. Yes, you right, you need to find some hobby outside the tech bubble (well works for me) to keep your brain going. Sewing is my meditation:-) and what helps me a lot with stress of everyday.
Keep up with reading.
I use "Loop Habit Tracker" (Androi) to track: Reading, Cold Shower, Meditation, Breath work, Drumming, Sports. You can easily export to CSV and it has own reporting features. I usually have one widget per habit on my home screen so I can easily tap it whenever I have accomplished one habit.
As for the reading I usually try to read 3-5 books per month. I then have a look at the total page number of each book and assign myself a daily rate of reading (e. g. 50 pages per day). I'm not very strict at it but it helps me to actually read more.
I use Emacs, ORG mode and org-roam to manage quotes and highlights from books (as part of my knowledge management system).
Awesome, thanks for sharing!
Wow, this was motivating and relatable. Also, thanks for sharing about the reading-tracker things.
Wow thank you very much for sharing! You inspired me on using the same tools and also build a similar app to track my progress too. I was always wondering how much time I end up spending on side-projects, reading goals etc and your logic will help me understand that for sure and improve! :)
So happy to hear! Keep us updated on your progresses, I would be very interested in seeing what you come up with 😊
Or maybe you could join @tafri and I, and we could try doing an awesome generic app together?
Out of curiosity, what are the features of the MyBook app, since you are using both GoodReads and MyBook?
Well, the best feature is that it is my doing, and it has an octopus logo :)
But more seriously, I tailor-made MyBooks to fit only one use-case: tracking my books read. Compared to GoodReads:
Bonus: the metadata are fetched automatically from GoodReads, you do not need to add them manually. Just search the title, clic on the right book in the result list, and fields get populated for you. I use goodreads-metadata-fetcher for that - a library in Kotlin I created and maintain myself → docs source
I put it on the play store once, but never updated it. If other people are interested, the source code is on GitHub and I can definitely improve a bit the repo to add a readme and an automated apk build, let me know!
It looks very interesting, I’ll definitely take a look.
Thanks for sharing.
OMG! You are really concentrated in reading)))
Anyway, the same thoughts, thank you for sharing, quite interesting text)