You'll love this one...!! A book club & more discussion
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Watcha Doin'? 2024
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Jayme, Moderator
(last edited Dec 21, 2024 09:40AM)
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Dec 21, 2024 09:40AM
We usually have mild winters here on the coast, but the next few days are going to be very cold for us - 30's during the day/20's at night - Fahrenheit. I don't really mind it though. I like it a little cold for Christmas.
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Yikes! I had to put it in a converter but that is cold Jayme!!! Can't even imagine that.. what are your usual temperatures around Christmas?We just had the longest stretch of days without any sunshine in 35 years or something. It was 11 or 12 days in a row. Just lots of clouds and some rain. Temperatures are allright though.
I just took a look at my weather app. Where we are heading tomorrow, they are expecting a high of 18℉ and 7℉ low. It is currently 12℉ and "feel like -2℉," which means it's windy there too. I should not have looked... Where we live should be about 20 degrees warmer, so still cold for us, but not nearly the same.
That's very similar to the weather we have here, Kristie. It's -10C here, which is 14F.
Lol Jayme, I thought it was -20 and -30 but just realised I misread!
Oh that’s funny, Peggy! I can see that.
Peggy - -20 and -30 was the winter temps in Minnesota where I grew-up. It is why I moved south to Virginia. Lol
-20 and -30 is ridiculous.
We have just come out of a cold snap that had us down around -30C, but we are up to a balmy -11 right now ❄️ Stay warm everybody
It's 2C here right now. I'm using my deck as a deep freeze. I have a ham and turkey out there. Someone asked me what I'd do if the weather gets warmer, and I said "I guess I'll be cooking". I was planning on bringing the ham in tomorrow anyway, but I may have to do the turkey as well.
A few weeks ago I started a massive clean up of my TBR shelf, after Kristie shared a tip on how to manage my shelves better. I have been through 1/3 of the books so far, and deleted a huge amount. I started with 1770 books in my TBR shelf and I am now in 1246. I glad I am finally making some serious progress.
Good work! I also culled a lot on my too. Feels much more manageable now.
Wow! That's great, Sandra! I wish my tips worked for me. lol Mine are still a mess. I just need to find some time to go through them.
That's great Sandra!What is your strategy? I need to know!
I take it your to read shelf is a wish list of books you want to read? Mine is books I own and someday intend to read. But I keep buying more. I was looking at it the other day and thinking there were a bunch on there I no longer have any desire to read. *sigh*.
Merry Christmas everyone! Hope you all have a wonderful day doing whatever you are doing!We had my family Christmas last night, and Lexx's family has all gone to Tasmania or Vietnam, so spending a quiet day with a book, wine, quiche, and some jazz in the cool.
Peggy wrote: "What is your strategy? I need to know!"My question too!
Merry Christmas everyone! Your day sounds lovely Rusalka! Except for the jazz haha. Definitely not my music of choice. We've done presents and off to my parents then aunts/cousins in the afternoon.
My TBR shelf are all owned books and I have a wishlist too. Everything under 3.5 star rating, I culled. On both lists.
That sounds lovely Rus! We're going to my dad this afternoon/evening. My sister will be there too with her partner and kids. And tomorrow we'll be with the inlaws.
My TBR is owned books, but I also have a wishlist shelf. I think both have many books I'm no longer interested in.
Sorry I posted here and never came back to answer. I was working on the cannelloni for dinner!The tip Kristie gave me was setting my TBR in pages instead of infinite scrolling, which greatly helped me to advance.
My strategy is not other than go page after page deleting books I don't want anymore. My TBR is a mixture of owned and wishlist. I have already given away the physical books I owned that I don't want anymore, and deleted them from my TBR at that time, so that is not a problem. Kindle books are another story. I'm also deleting anything with a not so good rating, most of WWII historical fiction (I've read dozens, and I don't plan to read dozens more), books I don't even remember why they are there, etc. I have hundreds of historical fiction because I loved the genre I would try anything, but I don't feel like that anymore (probably after too many bad historical fiction novels). So in general the criteria is I leave only what I'm sure I would read if I had it in my hands. Not even "maybes". I think the books will eventually find their way to me if they are meant to be read by me.
That is my criteria, but the strategy unfortunately is no other than checking the list book by book. I do a page of 50 every weekend or so.
Merry Christmas to everyone who celebrates! We had a lovely dinner at home. All my kids are here which is enough to make it perfect. We went to mass late at night. We'll do gifts in the morning, lunch, and probably snuggle on the couch for a movie or play board games.
That’s a great strategy, Sandra. Setting a goal is always a good plan. Happy Christmas to those who celebrate.
Merry Christmas everyone! Have a joyous day.
I've stopped buying books under 4 star ratings. I should cull my shelves accordingly. I'm thinking that I should read a book shortly after I've purchased it. What I currently do is read the book I've had the longest first except for recent publications. I want to at least read some of the books that appear on the Goodread's Awards at the end of the year.
My son has me using ChatGPT, and I told it not to give me ratings from Amazon because I find their ratings inflated. They are all over 4 stars. I was trying to decide between two books from the December Amazon First Reads, and instructed it to reference Goodreads - and it gave me incorrect information, saying neither book had a book page on Goodreads. I told it I had both pages up on different tabs. It then gave me the proper information.
Sarah wrote: " Except for the jazz haha. Definitely not my music of choice."It's okay, the jazz station was all Christmas carols :( So to the indie station it was. I prefer the jazz station while reading as there are less lyrics so less distractions.
I used ChatGPT to find me a connection between books earlier this year. I knew there was something that connected them but couldn't work it out. AI did (after a couple of goes). It's not perfect but it's a useful tool.
Janice wrote: "I've stopped buying books under 4 star ratings. I should cull my shelves accordingly. "Amazon ratings are very inflated, I agree.
Merry Christmas to those who celebrate! I've spend Christmas Eve and Christmas with my husband and son. Now I'm working the late shift...It's a great strategy, Sandra, I've deleted heaps, but for the one I delete, 2 newcomers are added :)
That is also true, Saar. Right now I'm thinking twice before adding a book, but I know as soon as I finish cleaning my shelf up I will forget how much work it was and will start adding like crazy
Haha, we are all true book hoarders ;) If it comes to series, I only add the first one of a series I want to read. Then I can decide if I continue or not.
I started culling. I've moved about 6 books to my won't read shelf. I guess it's a start. They were all freebies and/or short stories with low ratings around 3.0. I'm using the end of the year now that I've finished the hiking challenge, to read these books that are lower than the minimum page length. But what's the point? They are dragging me down and not making me enthusiastic about reading.
I also have a lot of freebies on my shelf. I agree that it is counterproductive in a way. You never feel like picking the book and keep reading. It is not really the point. Since I came back to college and have even less time for leisure reading I've become very picky about what I read because each minute is precious. It was scary at the beginning because I would abandon book after book after reading just a chapter or so. I thought it was a reading slump, but it wasn't. It is just that I don't want to regret having read a book when I'm done.
I'm going to have less time to read this coming year as I go full time with my degree next week. So I'm definitely going to prioritise reading books I really want to read. I am finding audiobooks the easiest at the moment but I would like to read some of my print books.
Thanks Sandra! I've always had my books per page so that's not something that can motivate me, lol! I think I should also just do a page every weekend, and also delete them from my ereader right away. I have two weeks off now so plenty of time, but I'd rather do fun things ;-)I like the won't read shelf Janice! It will be nice to see the efforts of all the culling and then delete them forever in one go :D
I've been culling my lists too. I have decided not to choose the free "prime first reads" unless it was something that I happened to have wanted to read. My kindle is filled with first reads that I just haven't got around to reading.I am reading only from my books for the annual challenge and if I don't get to them this year they are going to the book exchange in 2026.
The "won't read" shelf is a good idea. I'll have to think on that. It might be useful for me. Or maybe a shelf called "extras" for books that I own, but won't read unless I need them for a challenge or something.Wow! Good on you, Jayme. I always end up with a bunch of books that I still want to read but read out of time for at the end of the year. I couldn't make myself give them away.
I don't understand the reasoning behind changing your shelves from infinite scroll to pages.
Great idea too Kristie! It will be my Emergencies shelf.
Janice wrote: "I don't understand the reasoning behind changing your shelves from infinite scroll to pages."When you have them for infinite scroll, when you delete one book and the page reloads itself you are back to the top of the page, so it is very difficult to advance. Let's say you delete the book in the 200 position, the page reloads itself and you are back in the book in position 1. There is no way of doing all the 1770 books.
I complained about that here and Kristie suggested to use the pages instead. That way you are brought to the top of the page, but only of that specific page, no to the top of your whole TBR.
Oh! I thought it was just to make it more manageable, going one page at a time instead of having one ridiculously long list. But this makes more sense!
That makes sense, Sandra! I groan about that myself. The other thing I noticed was that if you have an exclusive shelf, you can delete the shelf but it moves all the books to your read shelf. I had anticapted-2024, and I had to individually delete them. I wish you could delete the shelf and the books in it.
Oh, I thought you could delete the whole shelf and unless the books were in other of your shelves they would be deleted too. Maybe this is something that changed recently?
I tried to delete the shelf and that's the message that popped up. I thought about making a regular shelf, and moving them all there to delete, but they'd still need to be on an exclusive shelf. So that wouldn't change anything.
Happy New Year all!! It's 12.29am on New Years Day here, and wanted to come and wish you all a wonderful 2025. May it be full of fun, adventures, laughter, and good books. Thanks for all your friendship in 2024, it means a lot to me :D
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