2020 Reading Log

Last year, I began to blog about the books I read. I am glad I made that decision, and I am thankful to the friend who shared their blog post of them tracking their reading because it really got me motivated to read. I am going to try and continue that this year! In addition, I am also starting my own Booktube channel, Josh’s Bookish Voyage. I am loving it! Editing was a little scary at first, but it is a process I enjoy doing. Although I still worry that I might not have the time to do all I’d like to do.

Check out my new channel!

Hopefully, I can do both, but my time may end up monopolized by one sometimes. I’m already finding myself behind on my blogs (still 4 or 5 more to write, and I just finished 4!). I am loving making videos though, so it is worth it! I’ve set a limit and sort of a goal of 2 videos per week. This won’t always be feasible, but I know the more excited I get, the more likely I am to spend too much time on this. I am really excited for the channel. I want to point out, my channel name is an homage to Carl Sagan’s Cosmos: A Personal Voyage. He began the series with a moving quote,

We are going to explore the cosmos in a ship of the imagination.

Carl Sagan, Cosmos

I can’t think of a better way to encapsulate what reading means to me. I will continue my monthly updates, and I’ll keep those linked below. This is also where I will keep my complete list of books I’ve read (below). You can also follow me on Goodreads and see my 2020 progress there too! I’ve also added a breakdown of my new approach to rating each book I read.

Monthly Updates

JanFebMarApr
MayJunJulAug
SepOctNovDec
Each month, I’ll share my TBR for that month and review the month before it!

Ratings in 2020

If you read my 2019 stats post, you’ll know I wanted to change how I approach rating the books I read because I felt like I was too generous. My average rating was 4 or 4.5, and the fact is not every book is amazing. It is true that I enjoyed most of what I read. Nevertheless, I wanted to develop a more objective approach, so I broke it down into the factors I consider most important to me in a book.

Key priorities:

  • Enjoyment
  • Writing style
  • Engagement
  • Comprehension
  • Pacing
  • Desire to reread
  • “Special”

These can be expanded for fiction/nonfiction which I have slightly different expectations for:

  • Plot/Structure
  • Characters/Content
  • Ending/Summary

This may seem like a very convoluted way of thinking about these, but for me, rating a book isn’t about any one aspect of it. There are books that aren’t the most enjoyable that I feel like are still a positive experience. Sure, some of these matter more. The idea is, I can appreciate certain aspects of a book, and breaking it down is a way of thinking about each one then tying it together. This is still very much a measure of what I like in a book.

I’ve weighted each characteristic based on how important it is to me (see below). That means the rating I give one trait, say enjoyment, will matter more than say the writing style. Comprehension matters because I want to leave the book feeling like I understood what I read, but sometimes, confusion doesn’t ruin the book. Now, each of these will often effect my rating of the other; if I don’t find a book engaging, I probably won’t enjoy it. However, I think there are a lot of eccentricities that go into how we judge a book such that breaking it down feels like the best approach for me.

I mentioned “special” because it gets to the core of that special feeling a book can make you feel. I can read a book that I find enjoyable, engaging, and everything else seem perfect about it, but that doesn’t mean it will necessarily be a profound book to me. I think that should matter. Another trait is my desire to reread a book. Now, together these two are only worth a quarter of a star out of five stars. However, you might see how that can just barely shift a book into lower category. On that note, I am moving away from .25 ratings and rounding to the nearest half; on Goodreads I will round up or down based on if my final number is above or below .5.

blog

This is a breakdown of each aspect of a book that matters to me with a weight to indicate how important it is in the calculation of the final number.

Completed Books

  1. Miracle Creek by Angie Kim ⭐️⭐️⭐️½
  2. Fall on Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
  3. The Red Tent by Anita Diamant ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
  4. Robin by Dave Itzkoff ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️½
  5. Scythe by Neal Shusterman ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
  6. Tehanu by Ursula K. Le Guin ⭐️⭐️⭐️½
  7. Underland by Robert Macfarlane ⭐️⭐️
  8. How We Know What Isn’t So by Thomas Gilovich ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
  9. If You Ask Me (And of Course You Won’t) by Betty White ⭐️⭐️⭐️½
  10. Girls on Fire by Robin Wasserman ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
  11. The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould ⭐️⭐️⭐️
  12. The Road by Cormac McCarthy ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
  13. Strange Exit by Parker Peevyhouse ⭐️⭐️½
  14. Yes Please by Amy Poehler ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
  15. Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi ⭐️⭐️⭐️½
  16. The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
  17. In an Absent Dream by Seanan McGuire ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️½
  18. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy ⭐️⭐️
  19. Wilder Girls by Rory Power ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
  20. Something Deeply Hidden by Sean Carroll ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
  21. The Girl from Nowhere by Eliska Tanszer ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️½

Updated 1/31/2020

*Novella(s)

Provided by NetGalley and/or publisher for a fair and honest review.

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