Five of My Bookish Habits

Posted on by Astrid

I’m once again joining in with Top 5 Tuesday. This week, the topic is bookish habits. Some of these are probably rather common, but some might not be.

1. I tend to read multiple books at a time. It’s rare that I finish a book before another one captures my interest, so I usually have at least three books I’m in the process of reading at the same time.

2. I almost exclusively read eBooks. Okay, so to those who know me, this may be obvious. I am blind and Braille books are extremely clunky. Then again, I hardly ever listen to audiobooks either. The reason is my poor English listening skills. Oh yeah, I hardly ever read books in any language other than English. This may seem obvious to those who don’t know me, since then you might not know that Dutch is my native language. I don’t seem to like Dutch books though.

3. I can’t do anything else while reading. Can’t listen to music or have the TV on or the like. I’m trying to train myself to listen to whale sounds or other white noise while reading. Otherwise I’m unable to read at day activities and I’d love to be able to do that.

4. I’m a true book collector. Especially now that I am a Bookshare (U.S.-based accessible book service) member, I download a lot more books than I actually read. I mean, when I was younger, my parents or later I myself would have to manualy scan print books for me, so I had an incentive to read all books on my shelf. Now I have a ton of textbooks and self-help books I only ever page through. My fiction bookshelf also has a lot on it I haven’t read. Conversely though, my Goodreads TBR list is rather short. The reason is I hardly use Goodreads.

5. I’m obsessed with checking book length and my progress percentage once I decide to read a book. I’m a slow reader, so I often want to know if I’m progressing nicely.

What are some of your bookish habits?

Top Five Books That Exceeded My Expectations

Posted on by Astrid

I am once again in the mood for books and book blogging. Today I discovered a new to me bookish meme called Top 5 Tuesday. Today’s topic is about the books that exceeded your expectations. Now I must say that I don’t usually read books I don’t expect to really like. For this reason, last week’s topic of books that weren’t what I expected, is a lot easier for me. Still, particularly in the last few years, I’ve come to read a few books that are outside of my admittedly rather narrow comfort zone and that I did end up loving. Here they are.

1. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. Well, let’s start with a book I read many years ago. I read this in high school for no other reason than it being in the public domain so easily accessible to me as a blind girl from a non-English-speaking country. I ended up really liking it, unlike the other books I read for English literature.

2. Don’t Wake Up by Liz Lawler. This was really outside of my comfort zone. I usually read YA and had never read a thriller before. The blurb spoke to me though. I ended up finishing this book in a few days, which is extremely rare for me.

3. Attachments by Rainbow Rowell. Though Fangirl has been on my TBR forever, I decided to read Attachments first. It is outside of my comfort zone too, as I rarely read romances or adult fiction in general. I really liked this one though.

4. Cruel to Be Kind by Cathy Glass. Of course, I need to include a memoir in this list, as that’s my favorite genre. I was told about Cathy Glass’ books many times by my trauma survivor friends in the UK and Ireland, but never got to read her books until I picked up this one in 2017. It isn’t the best book of hers I’ve read since, but it was the book that got me into Cathy Glass.

5. Unspeakable by Abbie Rushton. Will I ever have a top five list without this one on it? ☺️ This was a book I really expected to like, but it turned out even better. I loved the plot. It’s a shame I still haven’t read Consumed yet.