I set out to read more in 2013. I love to read and had found that the only reading I was doing was work related and on planes. I usually like to read before going to sleep, but I was falling asleep after reading only a few pages and it was taking me a long time to actually read a book. To get in some actual, productive reading, I started reading on BART during my commute. This reading was done in 20-25 minute chunks. I discovered I didn’t really like reading books in this fashion because I was worried about missing my stop and ending up in Oakland. But the commute time reading works great for magazines.

I finally got smart and found a way to exercise and read at the same time when I started listening to audio books while I walked or ran. I set out to read 50 books this year, which is about one book a week. Most of the books I had been downloading were 6-7 CDs for 6-7 hours of listening. I figured I could do that with my everyday exercise time and my commute time. I learned a lot in this effort to read more this year.

• I love reading mysteries, historical fiction, biographies, chick lit, history, non-fiction, and self-help books.
• I used to go to the library to work on Fridays and I would grab a stack of audio books and rip them while I wrote or worked.  Then I discovered Overdrive and the online library. That changed everything!
• I use the Overdrive app to read books either audio books or print books. The San Mateo County Library system uses this app to check out books online. I find that the app is a little bit flaky and is a power zapper for the iPhone. If I’m listening in the car, I plug in my phone while this app is on otherwise my power runs out around 2 pm. I can download library books for up to 21 days using this app. I find that this is enough time to finish the books even if I check out 4 at a time.  My library allows up to 8 books to be checked out at a time and up to 4 books to be put on hold. I usually have 4-5 books checked out at a time.
• Some narrators read VERRRY slowly. This drives me nuts when I run or walk because my pace kind of goes with the reader’s voice. I discovered a feature in Overdrive that will play the recording on a faster speed. Some books are perfect at 1.25x and others you can set at 1.5x or 1.75x and still have an easily understandable narrator.  For some books (Too Big to Fail, Vanity Fair) even using this tweak wasn’t enough to make the books palatable.
• I discovered that it is really nice to put books on an iPad, Kindle (I use the Kindle app on my iPhone and iPad) or iPad mini. This works great on planes or during commute time and is a lot lighter than bringing magazines or books. I keep a reading list (of work stuff and other articles) in Evernote and even those PDFs and other documents are easy to read on these devices. I definitely stock up on books before travel. I always try to keep 2-3 books checked out and loaded into Overdrive.
• I love the feel of holding a book and reading it. I found that I stayed up later reading an actual printed book. I found that if I was reading on the iPad that it was easy to just hit the power button and go to sleep. Having a print book made it to easy to see how many pages were left in the chapter and make a decision to keep reading until the end of the chapter. This also made it too easy to keep reading the next chapter. This phenomenon led to many late nights and bleary eyes, which me feel like a kid again, reading Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys mysteries under the covers with a flashlight.
• Buying books has become a different process now that I use audio books so extensively. I only purchased one audio book, which was the Fifty Shades of Grey series because I didn’t want to be caught dead reading it. I also found that I would rather check books out of the (virtual) library and not spend the money to buy an audio version of the book. For books I really liked or that I wanted to reread or mark up, I would go on Amazon and actually buy the print book. For my purposes of listening to books while I exercise, checking out audio books from the library works great.

Books Read in 2013:

• I’d Know You Anywhere – Laura Lippman
• Pictures of You –  Caroline Leavitt – collision leads to a love affair with dead woman’s husband
• At First Sight by Nicholas Sparks – hard to read in parts. NC Writer whose wife dies in childbirth
• The Notebook – Nicolas Sparks – love story of a painter
• I’ve Got Your Number – Sophie Kinsella – lost cell phone recovered and kept, similar to Bridget Jones Diary.
• Low Country – islands off the Georgia coast, Real Estate development gone bad, death of her daughter.
• Bridget Jones Diary – Beyond the Edge of Reason
• A Grown Up Kind Of Pretty – yuck, poorly written, badly spoken – Joshilyn Jackson
• Atonement  – I loved the movie, but the book was better
• Hunger Games (1,2 and 3)
• Ellen’s Book
• Fifty Shades of Grey, Fifty Shades Darker, and Fifty Shades Freed – Ugh, I can’t believe I bought this set.
• Twenties Girl – Sophie Kinsella
• The Help – Kathryn Stockett
• The Husband Habit – Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez
• Too Big To Fail (Too Long to Listen To) – About the Financial Crisis and big swinging dicks in that world.
• How to Be Danish – Patrick Kingsley
• The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
• Unfinished Business – Nora Roberts?
• The Paris Wife – Paula McLain
• The Chaperone – Laura Moriarty
• When It Happens to You – Molly Ringwald
• Water for Elephants – Sara Gruen
• Back to Work – Bill Clinton
• Audio Collection – Eckhart Tolle
• A New Earth (Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose) – Eckhart Tolle
• 5 Conversations to Have With Your Sons – Vicky Courtney. Good over all message, but too preachy & religious for me.
• Letter to My Daughter – Maya Angelou
• The Five Love Languages – Gary Chapman (wow, wish I had read this as a kid/teen)
• Proof of Heaven – Eben Alexander
• Legend – Jude Deveraux
• High Tide – Jude Deveraux
• The Power of Now ( A Guide to Spiritual Development) – Eckhart Tolle
• The Secret Lives of Wives – Iris Krasnow
• Nurtureshock – Po Bronson & Ashley Merryman
• Can You Keep a Secret – Sophie Kinsella
• Yarn: Remembering the Way Home – Kyoko Mori
• The Twelve Tribes of Hattie – Ayana Mathis
• In Defense of Food  – Michael Pollan
• The Miracle at Speedy Motors – Alexander McCall Smith
• Why Men Fake It: The Totally Unexpected Truth About Men and Sex – Abraham Morgentaler
• The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat – Edward Kelsey Moore
• Hattie Big Sky – Kirby Larson – liked the homesteader hard work & humor
• Mrs. Nixon – Ann Beattie – ugh, this was awful, I can’t believe I finished it!
• Cleopatra’s Daughter – Michelle Moran – loved the history here
• The Infinity Ring Series: Cave of Wonders – Matt Kirby
• Fall of Giants -Ken Follett verrryy long
• The Bonesetter’s Daughter – Amy Tan – yuck – the middle part was good in her own mother’s words but the other parts, not so much 🙁 disappointed.
• Fullness of Time – Kate Wilhelm – quick entertaining read. Mystery of time and people.
• Lily’s Crossing – Patricia Reilly Giff I think this a kids book?
• Dare me – Megan Abbott
• The Painted Girls – Cathy Marie Buchanan – interesting about Degas – Painted Dancer statue, but a little long and repetitive.
• The Family Corleone – Ed Falco
• Girls in White Dresses – Jennifer Close – last few chapters seemed unfinished and meandering
• Wallflower in Bloom – Claire Cook
• Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackery – long and boring
• A Question of Honor – Charles Todd
• Ellen’s revised book
• The Christmas Cookie Collection – Lori Wilde
• Stella Bain – Anita Shreve
• The Great Escape – Susan Elizabeth Phillips – liked this one
• If You Ask Me (And of Course You Won’t) – Betty White
• Bossypants – Tina Fey
• My Beloved World – Sonia Sotomayor – wow, what an awesome storyteller
• Mom & Me & Mom – Maya Angelou
• Proof of Guilt – Charles Todd
• Cronkite – Douglas Brinkley
• Monkey Mind – Daniel B. Smith – interesting waste of time book, different anxiety, found myself getting irritated listening to this book, obviously I needed to learn something from it.

I ended up reading 72 books this year.  Some were good reads, others were hard to get through, even just in listening mode. It made me realize that good stuff and bad stuff gets published and that if you are an established writer, even your mediocre (or even bad ) stuff will get published and read.

Leave me a comment and let me know what you’ve been reading and what books have stuck with you.