Musing Mondays #8

Musing Mondays is a meme hosted by Should be Reading, which involves answering a book related question each week.

What attracts you to a book blog? What puts you off in a book blog? Do you share personal stuff on your book blog?

I love book blogs that have a nice colour scheme and the colours are not too bright or clashing. I also love if a book blog has their own banners for things like 'ramblings' or other such posts. I like when they have their own rating system rather than just a star rating system. Vicky at Books, Biscuits and Tea uses biscuits as her rating system and I love that! I prefer when there is links and images of the books that the particular blogger is showcasing. Book discussions are also great. I love organized sidebars too.

I hate clutter and blinding colour schemes and backgrounds. I also hate when there is too much of a focus on the person's personal life in posts. I want to see mostly book related things. I think all the different Sunday memes are okay for talking a little about your personal life. I personally don't like talking about my personal life unless I'm letting you guys know why I have been absent or slacking a little in my posts.

Musing Mondays #7

Musing Mondays is a meme hosted by Should be Reading, which involves answering a book related question each week.

What are you currently reading? Is it any good? Would you recommend it?

I am currently re-reading Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince for the third or fourth time ad I'm loving it! If you haven't read this, do so now. I'm not going to waste my time explaining what it is because if you don't know what it is you have been living under a rock for the past decade.

This particular installment of the Harry Potter series is one of my favourites next to Goblet of Fire and Deathly Hallows. I can't decide between the three!

Leave a comment and let me know what you're currently reading.

Musing Mondays #6

Musing Mondays is a meme hosted by Should be Reading.

Have you ever read a book that, at the time, you didn’t feel a strong connection towards, but as time goes by you find yourself thinking about it a lot?

Yes! This has happened to me on several occasions, though I can only recall one book which I read recently that made me feel like that; Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk. I heard so many great things about this book and when I read it I didn't think much of it. I am still thinking about it, 3 weeks later and Tyler Durden is still lingering in my mind.

Has this ever happened to you? Let me know in the comments! 

Musing Mondays #5

Do you set goals for yourself, while reading? For example, “I want to get this book finished this weekend“, or “I will read __ pages today“, etc. Why, or why not?

 Yes! For the last two or three years I have set myself a goal of reading at least 100 pages a day. I usually end up reading 120-150 pages a day now that I have no school but when I was at school it was a struggle to keep up with the 100 pages a day. Since most of the time I could only manage around 80 pages a day at school, I would get up a little earlier the next morning to read the extra 20 pages I missed out on. I have serious OCD with things like that. 

Since I read at least 100 pages a day I always know the day I will finish the book. If the book has just over or just under 500 pages, it will take me 5 days to read it. I usually read a long-ish book starting Sunday or Monday and will have it finished by the weekend so I pick a short book to read over the weekend. I am really weird with all these odd goals. It has become like a chore at this stage (especially if I'm not enjoying a book) to finish it by a certain day and have a certain amount of pages read at the end of this particular day. I get really aggravated if I can't meet my daily goal and I can't think of anything but reading so I've very on edge a lot.

What about you? Do you have any reading goals you set for yourself?

Musing Mondays #4

Musing Mondays is a meme hosted by Should be Reading.

Do you think the book cover is “dead”? Do you care whether the “covers” on digital books exist or not? (based on this article)

No, I don't think the book cover is 'dead'. People are very attracted to the cover. It's like buying anything, the packaging has to attract you. In this case, the 'packaging' is the cover. If you were buying, say, a PS3 game or some other video game, you would want a nice box. You wouldn't be as inclined to buy it if it was a plain plastic box with nothing but the name printed on it. I can say that I have picked up books for the cover. I know, we shouldn't judge a book by it's cover but it's human nature, we do.

On the other hand, I don't think book covers are as important for e-books. You can't browse an e-book store as effectively as you can with a regular bookstore, so usually you know what book you're buying without having to check out the cover. Though, covers on free e-books do help. Why would you take something free if you didn't like it? I do like the covers on e-books but I wouldn't be as upset about i if they got rid of them compared to what I'd be like if they did it to print books.

What are your thoughts? Share it in the comments! 

Musing Mondays #3

Musing Mondays is a meme hosted by Should be Reading.

What is the longest book you have ever read? How long did it take you to read it?

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows which was 831 pages long. It was the mass market paperback adult edition. It took me about 8 days to read because I usually read 100 pages a day. It would be have been "It" by Stephen King which is something like 1300 pages but I stopped reading at around page 700 because it was so tiring! That took me around a week to read that much. I'm hoping to pick it back up soon.

Musing Mondays #2

Musing Mondays is a meme hosted by Should be Reading.

Do you have a reading goal for the year, such as __ books? Why or why not?

Yes, I have a goal of 80 books for the year which you can find here. Last year, my goal was 60 books and I read 67. This year I am sure I'll go past 80 books as I already have 42 read and it's just the beginning of June. I love challenging myself and I also love keeping track of things. 

Last year, I logged the books I read in a book journal which I got for Christmas. It was bought at K Two products. This year, I got a Moleskine book journal. The Moleskine book journal is by far the best. It has sticker labels and a little organiser at the back and in the front it has an alphabetical organizer for logging your books. It asks you the title, a star rating, your opinion, was it a first edition, what year was it published, a notes section, quotes, who published it, the author, what was the nationality of the author and more! I'll probably do talk more on the book journaling in another post.

I keep track of my books on Goodreads, also. I have a section on one of the groups to keep track of my challenges I'm doing such as A-Z Title challenge which is here. I keep track of my books on listography too. I'm addicted to book logging!!!

Do you log your books? Do you have a book journal? Are you doing any reading challenges/goals this year? Let me know!

Musing Mondays #1

Musing Mondays is a meme hosted by Should be Reading.

If you come across an unfamiliar word, do you stop and look it up right away?

If there is someone near me, I ask them. If I'm near a laptop that is on, I'll look it up. Otherwise, no. I won't go looking for a dictionary. I usually just guess what the word means by the context it's in.