The tensions haven't gone away. I still fight distractions, internal and external. My job responsibilities have shifted a bit so I won't have to spend as much time on social media. Still playing games on my phone more than I ought to, but it helps that one of my confederates in that pursuit decided to give it up, at least for a while. I cancelled Netflix and I'm reading more on the treadmill than I did before, though that only works for the ebooks. I have a harder time reaching for the paper ones, sometimes, since they are just less convenient.
Overall, though, I think my reading experience has improved. I've read about 40 books in the last six months. Nine of them were re-reads. Eight were books I read for work, mostly mission books for writing reviews. Twenty-two were from the library, either paper books or ebooks. But I was able to give 4-5 stars (out of five) to almost 70 percent of what I read. Only a dozen were in the 2-3 range. Previously my most common ranking was a 3... was reading too many middling mysteries and novels.
Two re-reads I gave fives to were:
- Eugene Peterson's A Long Obedience in the Same Direction
- and Philip Yancey's The Bible Jesus Read
- I once again loved The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
- I also enjoyed some Wendell Berry, both re-reads and first-time reads, and revisited a couple of Arthur Ransome books, a childhood favorite, and decided I'd like to read some more Fredrik Backman.
I don't have a particular goal for 2020 reading, though I'd like to read 80 books again, which seems to be my new normal. Decided to start of the year with a 90-day read through the Bible, which I'm happy about but is leaving me less time for other kinds of reading.
Note: I may have neglected this blog quite a bit, but I'm not abandoning it yet. Since we're counting things... this is post # 1000 I've published since launching the blog in 2006.
