Sunday Salon: Yet More Reupholstery

Since my regular blogging now consists of short review-type posts, I thought I’d change my Sunday Salon approach to more general reading topics, a kind of ‘bookish musings 2.0’. I’m still trying this out, so bear with me through the rambling phase.Also, I plan on adding to this throughout the week, which is why it’s longer than my new limit. Also, since I’m no longer blurbing books, I had to figure out a new plan for cover illustrations; today I’m displaying the books I read this week.

I’ve definitely emerged from May’s reading slump! Looking back over the year, I seem to be on a rollercoaster, going from months where I read tons of books to months where I barely crack open a cover. Let’s hope I manage to keep on a high note for all of summer at least. :)

I’ve requested quite a few Netgalley books, so Athie is nice and full (not to mention, added yet more freely available classics!). I definitely have mixed feelings on review copies in general, and book blogs being used as ‘publicity machines,’ but I’ve found Netgalley to be a much more independent blogger-friendly system than physical review copies. I can easily request a book, and if I’m approved, I can read the first few chapters and decline without feeling bad; it’s pretty much no effort to the publisher (ebooks aren’t finite copies, after all) so I don’t feel any imagined guilt. My favourite part about Netgalley is that a few university presses are on it, which means I get to read some marvelous academic nonfiction that my public library (rightfully) wouldn’t purchase. My least favourite aspect is that the vast majority of authors are white native English speakers; that’s not exactly a surprise in the publishing industry, though. I just hunt extra hard for the exceptions!;)

If you have an ereader, I’d suggest you give it a try, even if like me you’re averse to physical review copies. I didn’t think I’d use it at all, but due to the easy ‘decline’ option to deal with the duds, it has definitely enriched my reading. (For newbies to the site, I’d highly recommend browsing by publisher; recently, they’ve added quite a few ‘speciality’ type publishers that make it difficult to browse by ‘recent’ without feeling overwhelmed and their genre sorting is atrocious, with the same book in both a fiction and nonfiction category.) And since my library’s ebook selection is not very extensive, Netgalley fills a definite gap for me (it’s nice to have nonfiction and diverse fiction to read when my muscles can’t hold a book open!).

Athie saw a first this week too: I actually paid for an ebook! I’ve read and enjoyed two of Susanna Kearsley’s novels, but my library doesn’t have any others of her now out-of-print backlist on its shelves (and in fact, I had to ILL my second read). So when I saw that The Winter Sea was just $3 from Sourcebooks, I couldn’t resist. Even my wallet didn’t mind. ;) As my last comment on my Nook, this is why I am not a techie. It annoys me that now there’s a new version with a super-long battery life that’s also super-light (my only two quibbles with Athie, although I’m still very happy I chose him over a Kindle). Hmph. (Although I comfort myself that the new version isn’t nearly as pretty and touchscreens do drive my crazy. )

Of course, I’m still reading piles of physical books from the library. I’m trying to keep my checked out books to thirty or less (compared to maxing out at fifty regularly), which seems a good number for me. I could probably get it down to twenty if I tried harder, but I like having a variety of books for different moods! And for the record, I definitely don’t read all of the books I get from the library (I’ve had some comments on Library Loot posts wondering about that). Some I just don’t get to in time, but most I start and realise aren’t for me. I find that to be a huge upside of library books: being able to abandon books without thinking about wasted money!

In fact, for me the only downside is that I prefer trade paperback and most library books are hard cover. Definitely a small price to pay for such a wide variety of free literature. And I’m not just praising my library because I happened to win the first drawing for the adult summer reading program and brought three books (Hungry Woman in Paris, Grave Goods, and The Mystery of Grace) home with me for good on Wednesday! I know some people get a real thrill out of owning lots of books, but I’m not like that. My ideal home library would be a carefully curated place, with room only for tried-and-true authors. So even if I had book spending money, I’d still be a huge library patron.

My return to blogging is going even better than I expected (on my end at least)! I definitely miss being able to write long posts, and my attempts to write about every book I read, but my new approach really makes it all feel effortless. It might not be ideal, but it’s definitely sustainable, which is what I was missing before. For the first time in four and a half years of blogging I’ve got all of next week scheduled already (except my vlog, because I haven’t been to the library)!

Soon, I’ll try doing a short non-review post so I can start mixing things up on occasion, but I’m loathe to cut back much farther on the number of review-ish posts I’m doing each week, since that means fewer titles get blogged about. Speaking of which, I’ve triaged my backlist of reviews, listing down the books I most want to blog about (it turned about to be precisely twenty, perfectly divided between fiction and nonfiction, without me paying any attention!), which makes me feel better about the obscene amount of unblogged reads from this year (eighty, in case you’re wondering, which is about two-thirds of my total *blushes*). Do you tend to run a ‘review deficit’? I think I’m rivalling the Greeks. ;) (And if you don’t mind, do tell me what you think of my new style! I’m definitely open to changing things.)