Lately, I’ve been seeing a lot of people wanting to simplify and organize their lives by going through their items, getting rid of the stuff they don’t need and re-organizing everything. While I could do with some re-organizing and some light decluttering, I could never be a minimalist. I like being surrounded by stuff. Of course, I can live in a space with no furniture or personal items if I had to but my life is not an episode of Burn Notice.
Over the years, I have regretted buying a countless number of things for one reason or another: the item broke shortly after I bought it, I lost interest in the item, etc. I’ve been trying to be more careful about what I buy. I’ve been happier with my purchases for the most part. There are, however, some purchases that I have been wanting to do for a while now, but I keep delaying them, mostly because of the cost, the fear of not liking what I’m liking and the strong possibility of it falling apart in my hands.
New Digital Camera
I have an old Canon digital camera several years ago that is fine, but the quality of the photos is so bad that I have to edit them in order for them to be decent.
I’ve been hesitating to buy a new camera though because I don’t take pictures often, and I’m honestly afraid that I’d get poor quality pictures anyway.
A Second Desk
I have a desk for my laptop and small tasks but for things that require more space, like craft projects, it’s not functional. I’ve been thinking of getting a second desk so not only do I have the space to do art projects and other things, I can just leave stuff on it without the need to put everything back right away. Perhaps some people might think this would just add to the clutter but, honestly, it would be nice just to leave a project there so I can come back to it when I have the time.
A Portable DVD Player
I can play DVDs on my laptop, but I’m often using my laptop so I can’t multi-task. A portable DVD player would allow me to do both. I did have one, but it broke mysteriously one day, so I’m hesitant to buy one.
If I had to make one purchase right now, I would lean toward the portable DVD player. It’s the cheapest of the three, and it would help me watch more TV, which is one of my goals. I know. I know. It’s sad that I had to make it a goal to watch more TV. Stop mocking me. D=
Over the last few years, I have felt out of touch with what’s currently on television. It’s difficult to keep up with what’s popular on TV when you, um, don’t have a TV. I rely solely on streaming and, even then, I haven’t really been consistently watching TV. Because of this, one of my goals for the New Year is to watch at least one show consistently.
My number one problem with watching TV is trying to figure out what to watch. A lot of the shows I want to watch have been canceled for years, and I always wonder if I should watch them or if I should watch more popular shows that have not been canceled yet. I know. I know. I should be watching what I like but I can’t help but to think “Should I spend all my time watching a show no one is watching or talking about anymore?”
It’s especially difficult because I am limited to Netflix and Amazon Prime, so I wouldn’t be able to watch a good portion shows currently on the air. The good thing is, I do have a foundation to work off of. Three years ago, I made a list of TV shows that I wanted to watch. Needless to say, I didn’t finish any of them. So let’s make a new list of shows I want to watch and see if I can finish one season of one TV show in another three years.
Now, some of the shows are no longer available on streaming, so I can’t watch them at the moment, like Revenge and Awkward. Of the ones that I can watch, the only ones I’m interested in watching/finishing are Breaking Bad, Mr. Robot and True Blood. If and when I have time, I would love to re-watch Burn Notice and Dexter, although neither are priorities right now.
There are many other TV shows I want to watch but it’s tricky. I don’t like the idea of committing to a TV or movie, and then be totally devastated and/or appalled by the ending, so I have a tendency to fast forward and skip toward the end to see if I would be satisfied to watch the entire thing. I, of course, don’t do this every time and I am trying to not do as much, but it has helped with my decisions on which TV shows/movies to commit to.
In addition to Breaking Bad, Mr Robot and True Blood, I am also considering watching the following:
You’re the Worst
Daredevil
Broadchurch
Sneaky Pete
Arrested Development
Fleabag
The Americans
I’ve started on all of these shows but gave up on them for whatever reason. Mostly because it’s just difficult in general for me to watch something consistently. I don’t need to finish all of these shows before the end of the years, or even any of them. I just want to be making progress, instead of crying in front of my Netflix account. I already do that with my towers of unfinished books.
I don’t watch a lot of movies. The primary reason is there’s just not a lot of movies that I’m interested in to the point where I have to watch them or I will die. Two of the few exceptions have been The Accountant and Love, Rosie, and I loved both of them. Now, there have been other times where I’ve been dying to watch a movie and I’m hyped up with it, and then I end up disappointed. Not angry enough to throw a heavy object at someone but angry enough to lightly slap someone. Conversely, there have also been movies where I wasn’t expecting much, and I ended up loving them. Funny how that works. You’re hyped up for something, it’s garbage. You’re expecting to hate something, you love it. It’s like I’m in an episode of Black Mirror. Below are a few examples.
It’s Kind of a Funny Story Based on the book by the same name by Ned Vizzini, a depressed and suicidal teenager admits himself into a mental hospital after coming close to harming himself.
I knew about the book before the movie came out, but I watched the movie before I read the book. I had the opportunity to watch the movie for free while I was in college, and I was excited to see it. At the time, I wanted to read the book but was extremely bad with accomplishing goals and reading, more so than I am now. I know It’s hard to imagine. And I went by myself too. That’s how badly I wanted to see it. Boy, was I disappointed. I felt, in the movie, nothing really happened and, honestly, I barely remember what happens in the movie. It didn’t help that pretty much the entire movie took place in one primary location: the mental health ward of a hospital. This wasn’t the case with the book. They took out the entire first half of the books and the events that led the main character to checking himself into the hospital. Now, I’m not a book adaptation snob, especially because I watched the movie before I read the book, but it just was not a good representation of the book.
Logan Lucky A man recently fired from his construction jobs plans a heist during a NASCAR race.
I wasn’t sure if I was going to like it. I tend to like comedy dramas because of the balance of funny moments and serious moments. With comedies, they tend to overcompensate and they have the vibe, “Look at us. This is a comedy. Watch us do comedy.” Not with this. It’s a comedy with a ridiculous premise that would not happen in real life, but it still has a down-to-earth feel about it. You can’t help but to root for the likable characters.
Going the Distance A newly formed couple decides to try a long-distance relationship when one of them suddenly gets a job offer across the country.
When I watched the trailer for this, I was immediately drawn to it. It was a simple realistic premise. The characters seem funny and likable. It was a winner to me. Yeah, not so much. I couldn’t even get through the entire thing. Because it was so long ago since I watched, I don’t even remember why I don’t like it. I just remember it wasn’t what I thought it was going to be.
Twilight A teenage girl falls in love with a teenage boy, who happens to be a vampire
I can already feel a group of White girls judging me and rolling their eyes and saying, “God, even we don’t like Twilight.” Now, in my defense, I only watched it once and it was roughly ten years ago, when it came out. I barely even remember the film itself. I just remember watching it and liking it. I didn’t really know what to expect before I watched but Twilight is a movie that you don’t want to tell people you like. Oh well. I’ll live. :p
Whenever I post about a new project of any kind, I feel kind of guilty because I know that there would most likely not be any progress on it, and I would not post any meaningful updates on it. Anyone remember Keeping Up with the Newses? No? Great. If only if it were possible for me to forget about it.
In a moment of brief insanity, I made a list of goals for the year. For those who know me well, I would make an attempt to accomplish the goals but would most likely cry in front of a pile of unfinished books.
As of right now, the only progress I’ve made is that I read five books. While that is quite an accomplishment for me given that I read five books LAST YEAR, a lot of people can finish five books in one month. I know. I know. I shouldn’t compare myself to others but it’s kind of difficult when you’re in the book community and you’re surrounded by people who can devour a 500 page book in one sitting as if they’re a lion eating a gazelle. As a result, I feel like I’m a squirrel trying to eat pigeon droppings, and failing.
Also, keep in mind one of my goals is to watch more TV on a consistent basis, and I’m not even doing that. It’s quite sad, really. I can’t finish a 50-minute episode of Breaking Bad in less than a year. And I’m not even joking.
While I am making progress in reading more books, I’m pretty much failing in everything else. Apparently I’m not a multi-tasker. Although, to be fair, it is quite early but I don’t really have a good track record with personal projects and goals. Learning another language, for instance. I wanted to learn sign language. That didn’t work out. I wanted to learn French. That didn’t work out. I wanted to learn German. That didn’t work out. I kind of sort of want to learn Spanish, for practical reasons because there is a large Hispanic population here, but I honestly don’t want to. I basically want to do everything but can’t seem to focus. Normally, I would blame it on me being Asian but I don’t think that’s the problem here. :p
Like with most things I do, I try and plan out how to tackle a goal or project but mostly I just say “screw it,” and I just wing it. I did want to have some structure though, so I came up with the goal of reading 30 books. If you break it down per month, that’s 2 books a month for 6 months and 3 books a month for the other 6 months. And it does help to have a quota a month that I feel is not unreasonably high.
So far, I have read two books a piece for January and February and a lone one book for March, despite having more days. Going into this, I knew I wanted to read a variety of books at one time. For example, I might read a YA book that’s funny and heartfelt, a YA book that’s sad and serious.and an adult detective novel. I do not want to be reading three different versions of the same book at any given time. I want to have a little bit of variety and experience different genres, themes and writing styles.
Unfortunately, this past month, I made a mistake. I chose three books that I knew would be difficult for me to finish in a single month: a YA historical fantasy novel that’s 400 pages long (A Bright and Burning Shadow by Jessica Cluess), a funny YA novel that’s 359 pages long (The Boomerang Effect by Gordon Jack and a book of short stories involving being in the military (Redeployment by Phil Klay). Um, yeah…I made the wrong choices, especially because I wanted to read three books that month, and it just was never going to happen with the books that I chose.
Because of this, I only finished one book in March. For the month of April, to make up for being one book short, I am going to try to read three books. With that said, I made a more appropriate selection. I am sticking with Redeployment because it’s relatively short and it’s the only book I started before the end of March, so I might as well finish it. In addition to Redeployment, I am also reading Let’s Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson and Paperweight by Meg Haston.
I wanted to read a memoir this month, especially because before I got into reading more fiction, that’s been the genre I’ve been reading, and I wanted something funny.I also wanted to read a YA novel with a female character. Paperweight was more or less in my wheelhouse, centering around a young woman battling with self-image issue. I love damaged characters.
We will see how well this pans out but so far, it hasn’t been a disaster, which is always a good sign to me.
Months ago, I posted about my bookshelf, and how I organized it. Well, shortly after, I, well, basically changed everything, and it’s completely different now. I predict this is going to be an ongoing series. I hope you don’t mind monthly updates on my bookshelf.
It all started with my obsession with book-related YouTube channels. I was inspired to read more often and, also, surprise, to buy more books. This was especially because I had mostly non-fiction books, and I wanted to focus more on fiction.
As you can see, it’s almost completely different from what it was before. I moved all my fiction books to the bookshelf and organized them based on genre. Of course, there’s more than just books on display but still, there’ a crap ton of books on the shelf.
First, at the top of my bookshelf is my young adult fantasy. I had the stewie figure on another shelf but I just stuck it in the space in the middle. I quite liked it, so it stayed.
The shelf below that is my memoir section. Even though I’m making the shift to reading more fiction, I’ve always enjoyed reading about other people’s real life experiences.
The next section, well, as you can see, hasn’t really been well thought out. It’s just a place to display random things. And, yes, that’s a metal ampersand. It’s supposed to be a bottle opener and, no, I don’t drink alcohol.
Below that is my young adult fiction. Until recently, I had only a few young adult fiction books, and then, well, I went nuts.
Next is my adult fiction books. I have a nice selection here, but it’s difficult to find adult fiction that I like because I found that I read best if it’s written in first-person narration. I know. I know. I’m missing out on a lot of good books but I’m having difficulty enough reading consistently as it is. If I read a 500 page third-person book, I would literally die. x.x
And then we have what I’ve been calling “the shelf of death.” The shelf I don’t entirely know what to do with. I decided this is where I would put my miscellaneous “book things” on this shelf. There’s a pile of bookmarks. There’s a random journal I bought from Amazon. Obscured by the journal is two poetry books that I bought because I wanted more variety in my books.
Since I took this photo, I have added my collection of zines to this shelf. I’ve been wanting to do it for a while but I was just putting it off for so long. I do feel like they belong on this shelf since they’re book-ish.
The last shelf remains largely unchanged from before. This is where I store my Gundam kits and some of my legos. In addition, I have my children’s books on top of my Gundams. I know it’s not wise to put heavy objects on ardboard but eh, when you’re low on storage, you do what you have to do. The Gundam kits will survive. :p
The shelf will go through many changes over time. Heck, it’s gone through some changes since I’ve written this post but I do like it’s more of a bookshelf than an everything shelf.
I am often jealous of people who are able to focus on one particular thing, specifically a specific interest or hobby. I am the opposite. I have the tendency to, well, collect everything. I’m not joking. I’ve collected books. I’ve collected DVDs. I’m collected Legos. Miniatures. Action Figures. Art supplies. Magnets. Keychains. TV memorabilia, New York stuff, Anime Stuff. Kawaii Stationery. Regular Stationery. Office Supplies. Stamps. Coins. Everything, really. Well, not quite everything. Even I have limitations when it comes to collections. Below are some of the items I simply have no interest in collecting. And, please, as always do not send out any angry Asian mobs to chase me down with traditional bamboo torches while shouting in various Asian languages I do not understand.
K-pop Stuff
If a person were to come up to me and ask me what kind of music I like, I wouldn’t know what to say. In fact, I would not probably not be able to come up with anything and just stare at them for a few minutes while they slowly walk away from me, regretting that they ever asked me such a simple question.
It’s difficult for me to answer any type of question related to music since my music taste varies so much because it revolves around specific songs that I like and not so much specific artists that I like. And, yes, if you ask me to name what my favorite song is, I would shriek like a little girl and run away.
I don’t listen to foreign music in a regular basis. K-pop, especially, is not something I was ever interested in. It’s just not something that I enjoy because I am the type of person who would like to at least understand what a song is about. I know. I know. I can find a translation somewhere on the Internet. But no. I am lazy enough as it is. I will not hunt down translated lyrics for songs that I don’t love. I just can’t get into it.
Coincidentally enough, if I had to listen to a foreign song genre, it would clearly be sad French songs sung by sad French girls. What can I say, I like sad French songs.
In general, I don’t really collect music memorbillia. I have a few CDs. I have a number of guitar picks. But I am just not a music person. It’s weird enough that I collect guitar picks, and I don’t play the guitar.
Fidget Spinners
OK. I don’t understand how this became a cultural phenomenon in the first place. It just doesn’t appeal to me. Maybe because I know that if I use one, I would somehow chop off a finger. And. this is coming from a person who collects knives. Knives. I’m strange, I know. x.x
Video Games
As a child, I played video games with my brothers and various cousins. As I got older, I still had an interest in playing video games but I didn’t really want to own a video game system of my own, and I just slowly lost interest over time. I did buy like a Wolverine video game like ten years ago but I have no idea where it is now.
I have tried computer games but I have a tendency to have my computer crash here and there. Don’t ask me what I’m doing on my computer, thank you. :p
Because of this, I have gotten into the habit of, gasp, watching other people play video and computer games. A lot of people are always wondering, “Why the heck would you watch people play games and not play them yourself.” Because it’s cheaper and easier, and I don’t have to throw a brick at my computer out of frustration.
I am a person who needs structure when it comes to accomplishing tasks. Without a plan of some kind, I tend to, um, have a nervous breakdown and cry on the floor in the fetal position. An exaggeration, of course, but it’s not a great feeling when you try to do something, not knowing what the heck you’re doing and realizing pretty quickly that you’re going to fail miserably.
Now, having a plan doesn’t always work for me, as we all know from my failure to do reading challenges, but I figured I would to make goals for myself again. This is especially because, I’ve been having success reading books lately based on the simple concept of reading what I want to read and having some type of informal deadline attached to it. This small success has inspired me to create specific goals for myself for the New Year.
Now, I don’t like the idea of New Year’s resolutions because I feel like, more often than not, they’re not specific enough and I’m most likely going to ditch them early on. I am going to make them specific goals that I can work toward throughout the year. And, of course, because I know myself, I am going to limit myself to a relatively low amount of goals so, you know, I don’t overwhelm myself and cry like a little girl. I don’t want to write my next post from a psychiatric hospital, thank you.
Read at least 30 books
After trying to do so many reading challenges and failing year after year, I thought it was finally time to try a new approach. Last year, I’ve read a grand total of four books, which is actually an improvement for me given that I hadn’t read any books the two years prior. This year, I, of course, want to read more than four books. I was originally going to set a goal of reading two books a month because I thought this was a feasible goal for me. But the highest amount of books I read in a year was around that range, so I just increased it to 30. I wanted to go with a reasonable number that surpasses the highest amount that I’ve read. Now, you might ask yourself, “Kenny, why are you setting an unrealistic goal for yourself after spending nearly two years not reading anything? You know you’re setting yourself up for failure again.” Well, that is not the plan, but knowing me, it might head toward that direction later on. I just thought reading two to three books a month was a steady enough pace for me to not be bored nor overwhelmed. So far, as of the end of January, I have read two books. So, for now, I’m not crying.
Be consistently watching at least one TV show or movie at a time.
Now, I know most people do not have the goal of watching more television, especially people who are a lot more productive than I am. But I am a huge TV fan and, sadly, I just have not been watching as much television as I’d want to. It’s very difficult for me to sit and watch an entire movie or TV episode, so I usually have to watch a little at a time. Because of this, it was difficult for me to keep up with the shows I was watching because they were so many of them and with a lot of them, I wasn’t really watching them consistently so I forgot what I watching. to begin with,. I am hoping to watch at least one TV show or movie consistently.I’m tired of watching seven minutes of a TV episode, take a break for seven years and watch another 9 minutes. It’s not very productive.
Write at least one short story
Even though I love writing and I consider myself a writer, I haven’t really been writing as consistently as I should, especially when it comes to fiction. It’s been a few years since I’ve written short stories. The problem is I always get frustrated because I feel like I have no idea what I’m doing. The plan is to start writing little by little and hopefully finish at least one short story by the end of the year. Hopefully, without me wanting to throw my laptop out of my window. I kind of need my laptop.
Complete the outline of my novel
Speaking of writing, I have the plans to write a novel, eventually, but of course I have no idea when or if that will ever happen. But I’ve been working on the outline for the novel for so long that I just want it to be finished, hopefully before I reach the age of 90.
Spend more time on other hobbies
Over the years, I have dabbled in interests and hobbies that I’m interested in but haven’t spent a lot of time doing. The main things being crafts and building things like model kits and legos. Obviously I’m not very good at any of them but that’s mostly because I haven’t had a lot of practice and experience. Part of this is because I get easily frustrated when I’m doing these things. I need to spend ore time doing these things, so I don’t have a nervous breakdown while trying to draw a pigeon. No one wants to see that.
Once upon a time, the only way someone could watch a TV show or movie would be to have cable. Now, we have the options of various streaming services that we don’t even need to have a TV anymore. Of course the problem now is in order to watch all of the shows and movies we want to watch, we have to rely on multiple sources. For me, I use Netflix and Amazon Prime. Unfortunately, I don’t use either as much as I should, and I’ve been thinking about getting rid of one of them, but I’ve been having difficulty deciding which one. I feel like in order to watch everything I want, I need to keep both, even though I use Netflix, at best, here and there and I rarely even watch Amazon Prime right now. I am hoping that will change over time but in the meantime, I am keeping both for now but I can’t help but to think if I had to get rid of one of them, which one would it be? I guess this is my attempt in being a minimalist.
Of course, to be fair, I am only comparing Netflix with Amazon Prime Video and will not factor in the free shipping and other features, you get with a Prime membership; otherwise, it would be a slaughter, and I can’t afford to get any blood in Nostalgicism Studios right now. Clean-up crews are expensive.
In terms of functionality, Netflix is easier to use. It’s easier to find things. And whenever I’m watching a TV show on Amazon Prime, I find a pain to switch to a different episode. I do like how with Amazon Prime, they have a sidebar with the names and pictures of the actors who appear in any given scene, along with any songs that are in the scene and other tidbits of information. It saves me from looking up the information myself. Functionality is not the only thing that’s a factor here. I actually have to like the content. And this is where I’m torn.
Now, this is a nostalgia blog, so it makes logical sense to start with things that remind me of my past. Now, for me, I pretty much watch everything, so there’s a wide variety of shows I am nostalgic about. Cartoons. Crime Procedurals. Sitcoms. Supernatural Shows. Comedy Dramas. Yeah, pretty much everything. Both Netflix and Amazon Prime have a number of shows that I used to watch all the time that make me nostalgic for the past. Netflix has Grey’s Anatomy, Criminal Minds and, of course, one of my favorite all-time shows, Dexter. Amazon has Grimm, Dead Like Me and True Blood. Yeah, apparently I had an affection for shows where a million people die per episode. And brooding vampires, I guess.
For me, it’s more difficult to be nostalgic for movies because I don’t really watch the,m and the movies that I do find nostalgic are not found on Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. One of the very few movies I find nostalgic found on Neflix is Hot Fuzz. It’s not something I would normally watch but I was dragged by a friend to watch it in a theater when it originally came out in 2007. It has since become a fond memory.
Oddly enough, I find movies that are more recent nostalgic as well. I guess it’s the overall feeling of the movie, which what I got from Logan Luncky, which is is available on Amazon. Despite it being quite recent (2017), it reminded me of the past. It’s most likely because of the close-knit characters and the friendly back and forth between them, and how relatable the characters are.
There is a lot of original content on both Netflix and Amazon but they each have a different focus. Netflix has significantly more original content than Amazon does, but Netflix has more of a tendency to focus more on quantity than quality, specifically when it comes to movies.
In general, Netflix has a much wider variety than Amazon. When it comes to original TV shows on Amazon, there’s a lot of crime procedurals and action dramas nut not much else. With Netflix, there’s literally something for everyone.
Although I love to use Amazon for other purposes, I just don’t use it nearly as much as Netflix. I went through the Tv shows and movies available on Amazon Prime Video, and I was impressed than I was the last time I browsed it. Even so, it’s unanimous. Netflix wins.
Unfortunately, a side effect of this was I was not comfortable with the majority of the books that I owned because most of it was nonfiction, and I wanted to get away from that. So…
This happened.
Yes, I bought all of these books. And that’s not even all of them. In my defense,they were fairly “affordable”, and I was honestly tired of looking at my countless number of random nonfiction books of various random topics. I have a book on bookbinding. I have a book about death. I have a memoir of a man who bought a Korean Deli. Oh and I have a book about how to draw happy stick figures. I’m a very eclectic person.
But I wanted to change all of that, so I went on a buying frenzy and focused on YA fiction. Now, I am in my early 30s, and you would think I would feel uncomfortable about buying books means for kids and teens who are 15+ years younger than me. But no. For those of who suddenly forgot what this blog is about, I am all about nostalgia.
When I was a teenager, I didn’t do much reading even though I loved books. I was one of those people who would borrow books but not read them. That then grew to buying books I wouldn’t read. If you have taken a psychology class, feel free to indulge me with an informal analysis of my behavior. I didn’t take advantage of reading young adult fiction when I was an actual young adult, so I’m starting now.
Going into this, I knew I had to start with a strategy because I have a tendency of buying things I don’t use. I wanted to focus on Young Adult fiction because it’s easier to find books in first person narration, which is what I’m comfortable reading. I wanted to pick up as many books as possible to build up my fiction books, so my strategy was to buy any books that appealed to me that were on the cheaper side. I am Asian, after all. But in all seriousness, although I wanted to start with a good amount of fiction, this will be an ongoing thing. I just hope I don’t end up buying a book about umbrellas.
It’s been a while since I’ve cried about being held hostage by piles of unread and unfinished books. That is not because I’ve been super productive and reading book after book. Yeah, no. That did not happen. I am not the Asian male Rory Gilmore.
For those of you not familiar with my sad adventures of reading, I have been struggling with reading all my life until I finally made progress back in 2015 when I did a book challenge. I then fell back into not reading again for over two years until I finally finished a book earlier this year. After accomplishing such a major task, I tried to do a book challenge again this year and… let’s just say, it’s not going well.
Since my initial post about starting the reading challenges again, I have finished one book. Yes, One book in 11 months. That’s not really a surprise though. I am on the verge of finishing another book but clearly, this is not working.
From time to time, I have browsed book-related videos on YouTube, but nothing really stuck in terms of motivating me to actually read. I was just like, “I am sure you’re a lovely person, Jennifer, but I hate you for being more productive than me.” Until recently.
A while ago, back when I got my bookshelves, I wanted to have some inspiration on how to style and organize them, and I came across this very helpful video.
I then browsed a few of her other videos, liked what I saw and just stopped for no apparent reason. The story of my life, really. On a whim, I decided to browse book-related videos again, and came across her channel again. I then browsed several other book-related channels, and I became highly motivated to get back to reading again.
However, changes needed to be made. I decided to give up on the reading challenges because it was just not helping to motivate me to read. I have to go back to basics, and just read what I want to read based on my mood and interest. I don’t have a clear strategy on how to do this at this very moment, but I am going to start with reading what I’ve started and picking a few additional books and going from there.
I’ve also decided to start reading more YA fiction, and I’ve since bought a dozen or so YA novels. This is, of course, heavily influenced by YouTube, because pretty much all of the more popular book channels focus on YA fiction. Most of my books consist of nonfiction and memoirs. It’s difficult to find fiction books that I like because it’s difficult for me to read stories in third person narration, and a lot of fiction, specifically adult fiction, is in third person narration. Oddly enough, it turns out that most YA novels are in first-person narration, and I’ve been in a researching and buying frenzy since.
As a result, I’ve also been organizing and decluttering my booksjelves because I want to focus more on fiction right now, and there’s a lot of nofiction on my shelves. I’m not getting rid of anything. I’m just simply putting books I don’t think I’m going to be reading in the next 250 years in storage.
I don’t know if any of this will work. I hope it works out. But one thing I know for sure: it will be better than what I’ve doing now, which is basically nothing.
