DNF

The Wall Street Journal published this interesting article trying to figure out what best-sellers end up just collecting dust.

They create a scale of measurement — the Hawking Index — based on the idea that everyone has good intentions to read the famous physicist’s “A Brief History of Time” and get bogged down in all the science in chapter 1.

The WSJ admits their method is absolutely unscientific. They track where the most popular highlights are in Amazon eBook copies.

Maybe people who bought the actual doorstop version of the Piketty book read it cover to cover? (You won’t ever catch this Word Nerd slogging her way through an economics tome, digitally or in print…)

I did decide to abandon one of her Summer Reading Challenge titles about 10 percent in. Too much teenage angst in the pages and not enough plot to propel through it.

Reaching a point as a reader where I could say “DNF” without paroxysms of guilt was a big deal. It doesn’t happen often that I have to set one aside. But as Henry David Thoreau said, “Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.”

Wasting time?

10 Chair Designs for People Who Really Love Their Books

Do you have a favorite spot where you read?

I’ll read nearly anywhere, though most often I’m in the cafeteria at work or on my couch at home, usually with a feline friend or friends. Here are some reading places for people who are taking storing books and reading spaces quite seriously.

10 Chair Designs for People Who Really Love Their Books.

2012 Reading Goals and 2013

At 7:30 on New Year’s Eve, I finished my 90th book for the year.

Nothing like cutting it close.

In those 90 books were a total of 24,485 pages. That’s less pages than years past because of the number of audio books this year and the high number of graphic novels (18!) which added to the total, but are short on pages.

Toward the end, there was a bit of fear that I wasn’t going to make it to the total. It was a year, that’s for sure.

So, in 2013, I’m not setting a reading goal. On Goodreads, I said 75 books, because I’m so left-brained, I want to keep track of something. I know I’ll get that many, but I’m not trying to push it higher. I want to read quality this year, instead of quantity. Long books. Chewy books.

It’s incredibly freeing to say there’s no goal. No pressure. Just the ability to pick what to read and when to read it.