Like The Tomato
Nothing here but my musings about daily life, books, anime, and food.
I finally unpacked all our books. A little over a year here in Washington and all our books are now on bookshelves. Organized as well – the books are definitely arranged alphabetically by author, then alphabetically by title for authors we own multiple books of, and obviously the series in order of release.
The reorganization of our book collection was definitely not planned. Well, a little bit planned – since we needed to get extra shelves, I knew I wanted to do it but I just didn’t know when. But with my anxiety on high lately, I needed something to focus on. And the process did help to pull myself out of my head.
So…the process took a few hours. I started around 3 am – I know, crazy but my anxiety doesn’t really pick a time and when it’s on high, I definitely can’t sleep. So I knew the timing was perfect. I was done by about 11 am. Not too bad. I moved the little furniture we have in the living area to make room for the floor sorting. We had a number of books from authors whose last names start with the letters B, S, M and T, which I found weirdly interesting for some unknown reason.
We currently have 5 tall-ish bookshelves against the wall. We got these ones from Ikea to line the wall of the living area. We agreed on not shedding too much money on sturdier bookshelves at this time because we know that this apartment living is something temporary. And I wanted to build a customized bookshelf once we have a permanent living situation. We also decided to get a smaller 12 cube shelf which we got from Amazon to house our smaller paperbacks and mangas.
We do own a number of graphic novels and hardbound books, which are not photographed here. I still yet to organize those. They have shelves of their own, just not organized. That would be for a later time since organizing our paperbacks, fun as it was for me, was very tedious.
One thing I didn’t do though, and I should have, was tally the books. The last count we did was almost 3 years ago, and the total was a little over 5oo books. Our collection definitely grew from that number. I will definitely do the count once I organize the rest of the books. I am also planning on creating a spreadsheet just to catalog the books. So this organizing business is definitely not done.
Cindy, a reader that I’m following on YouTube, decided to host a readathon last month. The Asian Readathon. She had designed the readathon to be pressure free and somewhat lazy and after the video announcement, I agreed. Cindy had even provided a list of books for participant – including a list of books that will knock out four challenges (there were only five challenges in total).
I normally don’t get tempted to participate in readathons. Why? I have a problem with sticking to a TBRs. Sticking to a reading list had always been a difficult task for me. But I wanted to participate. I mean read one or two books that could satisfy four challenges and then read the group book. Total of 3 books a month, not difficult.
I prepared a non complicated TBR – 1 manga, 2 books. And I also prepared some back up books. Just in case I decided that I don’t want to read anything on the original TBR. Perfect.
Day 1 – I read 2 mangas – volume 1 of Tokyo Ghoul and Gantz. I don’t even know why decided to read 2 mangas when I know that reading even just 1 manga would KO 3 of the reading challenges. Whatever. My first day was good. And I felt like I was on a roll. I even read the first 2 short stories from the group book – A Thousand Beginnings and Endings.
Day 2 – picked up Afterworlds by Scott Westerfeld to satisfy the challenge of reading a book that features an Asian intersectional character. I don’t even know if this counted since obviously Scott Westerfeld is not Asian. But I figured, why not, this book still features an Asian character in the LGBT community. To me, that counted. Anyway, tackled this book in tandem – physical book and audiobook. I mean, this book definitely caught my attention and I couldn’t put it down. I finished this book at the end of week 1.
Strong right? I really felt that I was on the right track. I mean what could go wrong? I only needed to finish the group book if I want to succeed this readathon.
Then the worst thing happened – READING SLUMP.
I couldn’t pick up a book after reading Afterworlds. I got invested to the story and I can’t seem to forget it. I tried reading some of the stories in the group book. Which I did succeed but there are stories that I had to skip just to get to the ones that interested me. It was horrible.
For the next couple weeks, I struggled hard to pick up a book, anything at that point. And nothing kept my interest. It was bad. I was pretty disappointed in myself really. I mean how could this have happened on the easiest readathon ever! I had no choice – I DNF’d the group book.
The moral of the story: Roma can’t do readathons. It would just end in disappointment.
Currently Reading: A Trail Through Time (The Chronicles of St. Mary’s) by Jodi Taylor