/teeth - This is starting to feel like a tax on my distracted brain-state at the moment. I’m trying to decide whether to push myself harder on a morning routine and so on, or just accept that I’m having intensive therapy for trauma and I need to let all my energy focus on that. I guess maybe I should ask my therapist!
/clockoff - I wasn’t watching the clock, I was totally time-blind, and then… oops! I could’ve sworn I had an hour left, but I really didn’t. Still, I let this stand even though I wasn’t aware of it, because I do need to keep an eye on this habit.
/clockoff - No, not an accidental duplicate; I derailed twice, two days in a row. It was legit by the same reasoning, but it’s making me think about potentially altering the fine print. As with the /teeth goal, I think that my brain’s in a weird place and maybe some allowances need to be made for that.
New goals:
/theactsofarthur - a goal for rereading John Steinbeck’s retelling of Malory’s Le Morte Darthur… before the ebook is returned to the library for another borrower. So not the usual reading goal rules, but an end total of 349 pages by 2021-04-30.
/ouch - For reading Ouch: Why Pain Hurts, And Why It Doesn’t Have To. So far very interesting, though I’m worried it’ll go a little too far into “this generation doesn’t want to ever feel pain and that’s bad, this generation is weak and degenerate, etc”. The intro made it sound like it might go that way, but then the following chapters have been pretty balanced and reasonable (and scientific).
/theechowife - For reading Sarah Gailey’s The Echo Wife. I should’ve read it back when I got the ARC, so I really need to dig in. Fortunately, I’m eating it up – I love how different each of Gailey’s books have been! Somehow it reminds me very much of Laura Lam’s Goldilocks.
/portoflondonmurders - For reading one of the books in the British Library Crime Classics series, The Port of London Murders. I don’t know much about Josephine Bell, or what to expect from this book, so here goes!
/whitebread - For reading Aaron Bobrow-Strain’s book on food history through the medium of bread, and particularly the white, pre-sliced, store-bought loaf. It’s going to be very US-focused, but I’m told it’s really interesting. Barely started so far, though!
Changes to existing goals:
/deathinfancydress - Finished and archived! Not too surprising, and a little grim at the end. Golden Age crime fiction, as a whole, ends by restoring all that’s right with the world… but there’s a good number of the British Library Crime Classics which are a bit unsure about whether that was worth it!
/backlogzero - And once again finished and archived. Now I need to put thought to have to beemind the age of my emails. I have a really important one I must answer, and I’ve been putting it off.
/considerthefork - Finished and archived! It was interesting, but slower than I expected; I normally like non-fiction of this genre, so I guess Bee Wilson’s writing just didn’t quite work for me. Shame, she has a couple of other books I’m kinda interested in.
/apoisonedseason - Another reading goal finished and archived – and this one was pure fun. I’m not sure how much of this series I’ll end up reading, and whether the main character will develop enough to keep me interested… but for now it is.
Notes:
Since my trauma reprocessing therapy (EMDR) has properly started now, I expect to have quite a weird couple of weeks. Unfortunately, my exams and final assessments are also approaching: I think my final assessment for “principles of biology” is due on 12th May, and then the exam for “biostatistics and epidemiology” on the 1st June. So memo to self, set some breaks in a week or two! …And the end dates of the related goals!
As you can see, at the very least I have felt like reading…
/unquiethistory - Usual reading goal format, for Library: An Unquiet History by Matthew Battles. Actually fairly meh so far though?
/snowballinablizzard - Reading goal! All about uncertainty in medicine/medical science, and proving interesting so far, even though the first chapter does lean pretty hard on a discredited experiment.
/inventionofmurder - Aaand another reading goal, for Judith Flanders’ The Invention of Murder. I thought this might be a bit dry, but I’ve gulped down the first 45 pages, so maybe not…
/backlogtabs - Restarted, to get me out of the hole I got into at the same time as I was struggling with my emails.
/murderousrelation - Reading goal! For Deanna Raybourn’s A Murderous Relation. Which should be a speedy fun read, based on my experiences with the rest of the series…
Changes to existing goals:
/howtoreadapaper - Finished and archived! Pretty useful, though I ended up skimming the chapters that are aimed a lot more at doctors.
/theechowife - Oops, I accidentally inhaled it. Really good.
/reinventingthewheel - Finished and archived. This was okay but very snobby about the right way to make and eat cheese (their way).
/theactsofarthur - Finished and archived! It took me a while to remember what I liked so much, and honestly it’s mostly that he made me like Lancelot, somehow, and believe somewhat in what happens between Lancelot and Guinevere.
/ouch - Another reading goal finished! Fascinating, and mostly didn’t fall into the pitfalls I expected/feared.
/portoflondonmurders - Finished, so it’ll archive tonight! It was okay, not one of the best of the British Library Crime Classics, but with interesting details about laws for the relief of the poor that I had no idea about.
/lshtm_biostatistics - I keep adding a bit more break on this one, since I have an assignment due in my other module and will have time after that to study for this…
/slackoffmore - The sequel to my slackoff goal, for enforcing not using Slack on Saturdays, my day off. It’s linked to IFTTT, which will send a datapoint to the goal if I spend more than 10 minutes on Slack on Saturdays, as per Rescuetime.
/plainbadheroines - A reading goal with the usual parameters, for reading Emily M. Danforth’s Plain Bad Heroines. Not sure how I’ll like it since horror isn’t always my genre…
/darkmatteranddinos - A reading goal for Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs by Lisa Randall. Unfortunately I can’t make an actually memorable slug for it because of the new goal name character limit, so this is the best I can do.
Changes to existing goals:
/snowballinablizzard - Finished the book! It will archive later today. Though it leaned on a discredited example in the first chapter, the rest is solid.
/murderousrelation - Finished and due to archive! Not my favourite of the series, but fun.
/unquiethistory - Finished and archived. This book seemed a bit unfocused to me, just a sort of meander through libraries of history.
/whitebread - Also finished and archived. This is a great social history of the US through discussion of industrial bread.
/murdersaswine - For reading Nap Lombard’s Murder’s a Swine! Usual reading goal rules.
/kd1_magicbites - For rereading Ilona Andrews’ Magic Bites, with the usual reading goal rules. (kd_ is for Kate Daniels, a good identifier for the series.)
/phoenixextravagant - This is a pilot reading goal! @dreev’s idea of beeminding the stuff you buy (e.g. beeminding to ensure you use the gym equipment you buy or read the books you order) clicked with my current method of making sure I read the books I buy by putting them somewhere inconvenient so the books stay fresh and relevant in my mind. This has been working great, but obviously only for physical books… but since I touch every goal on my Beeminder dashboard every day, this may be a way to make the idea work for ebooks too. The goal has a zero rate and will never be due – but I’ll interact it with it every day, keeping the book and my desire to read it firmly in the forefront of my mind, with a handy graph just ready to be started once I want to. This one’s for reading Yoon Ha Lee’s Phoenix Extravagant.
/le3_afatalwaltz - This is also a pilot goal, this one for reading A Fatal Waltz by Tasha Alexander.
/wag4_necropolis - And ditto, for the fourth Whyborne & Griffin book by Jordan L. Hawk. Three goals are enough for now, to dip into whether this plan proves annoying or wondrous. I’ll probably add a couple more over the course of the week.
Changes to existing goals:
/lshtm_biostatistics - Got the break bumped on a little longer so it restarts on Sunday, matching my study plans and giving me a break after the grand finale of the lshtm_biology goal in the form of my assignment.
/lshtm_biology - Finished and archived! So far I have a GPA of 5 – here’s hoping I haven’t wrecked that with this final assignment.
/lshtm_statsprogress - Has been restarted! Same deal as before: I’ve pre-entered the datapoints on the date I want them completed to provide a roadmap. In this case I also have a set-in-stone end-date and some breaks (keeping Saturdays as my day off from everything, including studying, and adding a break for the day after I get vaccinated).
/bsupport - I’ve added a break for my days off during my exams.
A few goal names are going to be changed to make the goals sort together in my archive – mostly book series, so that “andonlytodeceive” is now “le1_andonlytodeceive”, and “apoisonedseason” is “le2_apoisonedseason”. I’ll probably keep the archived goals as they are, mostly, and only change things in an ongoing series, as and when I pick up the next book. I’m not sure if I like it, yet, and might change it back. It does make them less human-readable, so you can’t just assume the name of a book is the name of my goal for it and land on my goal page…
Notes:
I’ve elected to keep my breaks for my exam period as minimal as possible, with just my main work goal getting a break. Everything else should be able to tick over.
Ditto for my first vaccination; I know there’s a chance I’ll need a day or two off, but I’m banking on things not being that extreme.
Because of my inbox zero goal, I have now finally booked my eye test and the extra OCT scan I need for macular disease screening, to get that email out of my snoozed folder. Yay! Thanks, Beeminder.
/fastfood - This was kind of a mistake, actually, a miscalculation – but whatever, I need this to be upheld, so here we go.
New goals:
/kd2_magicburns - The second book in the Kate Daniels series. I want to go straight into it, so I’ve created it without any buffer. Otherwise, usual reading goal rules.
/behave - A new pilot flat-forever goal! I need a snappy name for this scheme. Anyway, it’s for reading Robert Sapolsky’s Behave. It’s been aaages since I grabbed this (from the bookshop in St Pancras, on my way to Belgium waaay back when), but I saw a good review of it recently, and I’m in the mood for some hey-aren’t-humans-weird.
/historyoftaste - Also part of Project I Need A Snappy Name For This, for reading Food: The History of Taste, ed. Paul Freedman. It’s a book I recently picked up, and it’s a bit more academic than some of my other non-fiction choices, so I don’t want it to get lost on my TBR pile.
/somebodyatthedoor - Standard reading goal starting immediately, for reading Raymond Postgate’s Somebody at the Door.
Changes to existing goals:
/wag4_necropolis - Now has a rate (standard reading goal setup) and has been tweaked to start now, because I’ve picked up the book in question! I’m not sure I would’ve without the Beeminder goal pre-created like this, so that’s +1 for this little pilot scheme.
/thelibraryofthedead - Goal finished and archived! The book was okay, but felt unavoidably derivative given certain similarities to the work of Ben Aaronovitch… not to mention the similarities in cover design.
/murdersaswine - Goal finished and archived! A pretty fun British Library Crime Classic. I’d read the other book by this husband-wife pair.
/inventionofmurder - Goal finished and archived! Could’ve been either very lurid or very dry, but for me at least, trod a path between the two.
/tabzeroes & /inboxzeroes - These goals are going really well and are really helpful for my general sense of being in control. I archived them back when I was slimming down on my total number of goals, but actually I think they were more necessary for my general mental health than I thought. Even though I’m nowhere near edge-skating on these goals – I’m gaining buffer by the day – just having the goal is enough to make me do the thing (when I really, really wasn’t before). I’m upping the goal to 6/week for each now!
Notes:
I am half-vaccinated! I joined House Pfizer and received no side effects from the first jab apart from a sore arm.
/walls - A Project Bookminder goal, meaning it’s flat forever and just hanging out to prod me into reading Walls: A History of Civilization in Blood and Brick by David Frye.
/thewholepicture - Also Project Bookminder, reminding me to pick up The Whole Picture: The Colonial Story of Art in Our Museums & Why We Need to Talk About It by Alice Procter.
/wag5_bloodline Project Bookminder! This one is for the next book in Jordan L. Hawk’s Whyborne & Griffin series.
/comfortmewithapples - Project Bookminder again! This one is an ARC of Cat Valente’s new book, Comfort Me With Apples. If these goals can make me read my ARCs sort of on time, that’d be huge…
/cheltenhammurder - This is a standard reading goal (rate 5/day, autoratchet to one day) for reading The Cheltenham Square Murder by John Bude.
/fruit - I haven’t been eating enough fruit/veg, and I definitely haven’t been making sure I get full proper servings of them. I have no idea where I stand, so this conservative goal (5 servings/week) will let me get a handle on my fruit consumption as it stands now, and hopefully then I can increase it until it’s a nice healthy amount. The goal counts servings, so this is in theory fall-off-a-log easy right now… but my diet kinda got a bit messed up due to both me and my wife dealing with depression and anxiety for quiiiite a while. No judging me allowed!
/historyoftaste - Has become a regular reading goal (rate of 5/day, autoratchet to 1 day of safety) already. Not sure if this is a triumph of the “make goals for books you want to read someday” scheme or just a reflection of the fact that it’s new to my collection and thus very memorable anyway.
/phoenixextravagant - Also became a regular reading goal! I think this whole plan is a success, because I’d meant to pick this up for ages, but somehow it never became a priority… and yet now, here I am.
/somebodyatthedoor - Finished and archived. Somebody at the Door (Raymond Postgate) was okay, but it didn’t quite hang together as a continuous narrative.
/wag4_necropolis - Finished and archived! A fun book, and yaaay, set in Egypt.
/lshtm_statsprogress - Finished and archived again, because I’ve covered all the modules I need to cover. The exam approacheth; wish me luck.
Notes:
Maybe I need a section for just Project Bookminder goals, the ins and outs thereof…
Exam on Monday-Tuesday. Seriously, wish me luck… I’m in the unusual-for-me state of feeling pretty confident about the math, and pretty concerned about the epidemiology. Blech.
As a newbee, it’s interesting to me how people organize things in beeminder. So these are just some thoughts of mine related to your book projects.
I see you have beeminder place holders for reading books. One way I might do this is have one beeminder to read X pages per day of "My current book at http://docs.google.com/URLTOBOOKLIST." Then I’d just place the list of all of the books there. Something like that.
Or if one liked seeing completion of book reading beeminder projects, I’d put in the fine details of the current book that the last thing I’d do is create a new project from http://docs.google.com/URLTOBOOKLIST. And copy this paragraph to the new project.
On the other hand, I could see that having a placeholder beeminder could also be motivating to anticipate the next book or two.
Thanks for your ideas! You can read my reasoning for doing these placeholder goals in this earlier entry, under the explanation of the /phoenixextravagant goal – but basically it’s an idea of @dreev’s (beemind everything you buy) combined with something I was doing to help with the fact that things slide out of my mind if they’re not visible to me. For a while I was just putting books I’d recently acquired somewhere inconvenient so I had to interact with them regularly (e.g. on my armchair), but obviously that didn’t work for ebooks! Buuut, I interact with all my Beeminder goals every day, so having them visible to me in my goal list serves that function for me.
The other thing my reading goals do is ensure I finish the books I start (or make a conscious decision to stop reading – that’s OK too). So that’s why there’s a goal for each, instead of one single reading goal. The 5 pages/day goal is not what I want to read each day (I usually read at least 100 pages a day) but how much I figure is a) small enough that I’ll do it even on a day where I reaaaally don’t want to read a particular book (because I’m a mood-reader) and b) big enough to have the potential to hook me back into whatever narrative I’m reading.
I’m probably not interested in changing that up at the moment; it’s working out for me! The reading goals are multiplying, buuut lots of books on the go at once was always my thing as a kid and it’s kind of more natural for me now still.
/lshtm_biostatistics - In a final epic burst, I’m done. The exam’s handed in, and I think I probably did okay or even quite well, though I’m not sure.
Project Bookminder:
Definitions: flat-forever goal = a goal made to remind me that I have this book and want to read it someday, with a rate of 0; standard reading goal = rate of 5/day, autoratchet to 1 day of safety.
Overall note: as of June 3rd, I’m trying to remember to add notes about where I’m at with each book as I add my daily entry, and I’m making the data public! So now if you’re interested how I’m getting along with a book, you can take a gander and not just see how fast I’m reading, but any comments I’m making. I’m also deliberately entering something on each flat-forever goal each day, just to ensure that each one is coming to my notice as they begin to multiply…
/cheltenhammurder - Finished the book and archived the goal! Not bad, but not exceptional – if you’re looking for a relatively typical Golden Age crime novel, this is one of them. Bit police-procedural-y. Sketchy on any kind of detail outside the mystery.
/comfortmewithapples - Got a rate, then got finished that same day. Archived now! It took me a few pages to figure out exactly what was going on; I feel like I’m missing some of the cleverness somehow, so I might give it another skim.
/kd2_magicburns - Finished and archived! I forget how slowly these books actually move on the main romance. I mean, it’s obvious from the genre where it’s going, but you can’t see how it’s going to work yet. Meanwhile, Kate’s history slowly becomes clear… but very slowly.
/kd3_magicstrikes - New flat-forever goal, to get me to read the next book in the series sometime soon but not immediately.
/twowaymurder - Standard reading goal, starting immediately, for reading E.C.R. Lorac’s Two-Way Murder. I felt like I needed something like a Golden Age crime story to let my brain chill out after my exam. Criminy.
/beatingbackthedevil - Standard reading goal, starting immediately, for Maryn McKenna’s book on the Epidemic Intelligence Service. I know this doesn’t sound restful after my biostats & epidemiology exam, but it’s the sort of thing that will remind me what I’m doing it for in the first place.
/plainbadheroines - Finished and archived! It didn’t really work out for me, I think, though I’m going to let it sit before I write a review.
/thewholepicture - Has changed into a standard reading goal, because I’m underway!
Notes:
I got a bunch of new books this week, so I’m about to set up the flat goals for those… so I thought I’d post this week’s busy bookishness first!
Thanks for wishing me luck in my exam; all done, and I suspect I’ve done reasonably well, though I had to really get my head down and work hard.
/ehlyah - Some people might remember a discussion on the forum about whether it’s okay to have a Beeminder goal to remind you to do stuff for a spouse, instead of just remembering to do it. I strongly advocated for using Beeminder for that kind of thing, and did not agree that’s less considerate than just magically remembering somehow. I’ve never had a goal for it before (though I do have a goal to remind me to touch base with friends), but it’s something I want to work on, so now I have a goal for that – with the full knowledge and blessing of my wife, who believes exactly as I expected them to about this idea.
Changes to existing goals:
/slackoffmore - This goal has been completely empty of interaction because just having it seems to be enough to stop me spending too much time on Slack! Since that’s the case, I could easily build up a ton of buffer on it and then get into bad habits, so I’ve added an autoratchet so I can only have +1 available at any time.
/veggies - I was overachieving on this goal (which was set very low, at 5/week), so I’ve doubled the requirements starting a week from now.
/fruit - I’m not upping this one as steeply, since I do want to tilt the scales so I’m getting my five a day more from veggies than from sugary fruit, so I want to scale up the veggies goal faster/more steeply… but I have upped it to 1/day, starting a week from now.
Project Bookminder:
Definitions: flat-forever goal = a goal made to remind me that I have this book and want to read it someday, with a rate of 0; standard reading goal = rate of 5/day, autoratchet to 1 day of safety. All reading goals have public datapoints with comments describing how I’m getting along with the book!
/elephantsonacid - For reading the book of that name by Alex Boese, a popular science book about weird experiments. I started this as soon as I created the goal, so it’s a standard reading goal.
/le3_afatalwaltz - I managed to get hold of a paperback of this, which moved it up my reading list a bit, and turned it into a standard reading goal. I do think the flat-forever format is really helping me get round to books in time, and also keep in my face how many books I already have and long to read.
/queerprinciples - For reading Cat Sebastian’s The Queer Principles of Kit Webb. I started this as soon as I got it (on release day!), so it’s a standard reading goal – and I’m eating it up. Nobleman in precarious position, gruff former highwayman, plans to do crime together… and of course they’re falling in love. Exactly the kind of fluff I wanted right now.
wag5_bloodline - Has become a standard reading goal, because I’ve started on it! Even if I am feeling bogged down now because of the characters stupidly lying to each other. Gah.
/gastrophysics - Started as a flat-forever goal earlier this week, but picked up once I’d finished Food: A History of Taste. This is by Professor Charles Spence, and it’s too chatty, badly sourced and based on anecdote to treat as science, but it’s a fun read.
/explodingteeth - New flat-forever goal for reading The Mystery of the Exploding Teeth and Other Curiosities from the History of Medicine by Thomas Morris. The title pretty much says it all!
/ancestors - New flat-forever goal for eventually reading Ancestors, by Alice Roberts. It’s all about seven prehistoric burials and what they can tell us – right up my street.
/historyoftaste - All finished and archived! Rather an academic and dry book; wasn’t ever quite sure I wanted to finish it, but each essay was by a different person, so some were better than others.
/darkmatteranddinos - Argh, this one annoyed me. Finished and archived. The dinosaurs are mentioned in maybe half a chapter near the very end of the book – the book is 99% about dark matter, with the dinosaurs roped in because the author wants dark matter to explain the alleged periodicity of comet-strikes.
/phoenixextravagant - Finished! Not what I expected, but there was much to enjoy.
/twowaymurder - All finished! Not E.C.R. Lorac’s best – though it may have been better if she’d edited it for publication – but enjoyable as always, and she definitely successfully distracted me from the real culprit.
…I should make a couple more flat-forever goals for the other books purchased last week, but this seems like a long enough post already. Yikes.
Thanks! As someone who has ADHD/ADD, even a little bit of complexity can overwhelm me. I’d like to be able to focus in on certain kinds of goals at one time, and having to find my goals scattered about using Beeminder’s hard-coded sort order is unsettling at times. I would value a more robust variety of views of my goals. Other than tags (and my own homegrown prefix naming standard), Beeminder seems to lack this kind of feature at the present time.
/tody - Got a new app, Tody, for tracking chores and figuring out when cleaning is due. They show you what’s due each day, so this goal will help me keep that all in order.
Changes to existing goals:
/slackoff - I upped the rate on this goal from 6/week to 6.5 due to lots of extra buffer!
Project Bookminder:
Definitions: flat-forever goal = a goal made to remind me that I have this book and want to read it someday, with a rate of 0; standard reading goal = rate of 5/day, autoratchet to 1 day of safety. All reading goals have public datapoints with daily comments describing how I’m getting along with the book… or not even starting it, if the goal is still flat-forever!
/elephantsonacid - Finished and due to archive! Not a great book; I was familiar with most of the experiments, and a little nonplussed by the amoral reporting of some of the cruel animal experiments.
/walls - This goal reading Walls: A History of Civilization in Blood and Brick by David Frye got turned into a standard reading goal today when I picked it up… basically out of guilt for it being one of the older reading goals! I guess this is the goal working as intended, heh.
/seashakenhouses - I picked up Seashaken Houses by Tom Nancollas on a total whim, so I decided to harness the whim and start on this book right away – hence it beginning right away as a standard reading goal, instead of starting as a flat-forever one.
/explodingteeth - I kept saying I’d start on this one once I finished Elephants on Acid, so here goes – this is now a standard reading goal! So far it’s very bitty and focused on grossing out the reader. Weird object insertion, etc, etc. Looking forward to some actual medical mysteries, rather than the mysteries of the human pysche…
/thewholepicture - This book by Alice Procter is about a hard look at museums and galleries to see how they have been shaped by (and in some few cases, comment on) colonialism. I enjoyed it.
/queerprinciples - This was for reading Cat Sebastian’s new book, The Queer Principles of Kit Webb, and I finished it last night. Cute, though I called the big surprise twist.
Notes
You can see I had a bit of a spree with new books and ARCs this week. Actually, some of the new goals were me catching up on making goals, so it’s more accurate to say I had a spree this fortnight. I’ll admit that the idea of having to make a Beeminder goal for every book I buy is a bit daunting and almost made me put some of these back on the shelf – it’s proving a nice barrier to impulse purchases.
I do need to think about the fact that I have a lot of non-book goals, and that can lead to burnout for me. I should keep an eye on which goals are still serving their purpose and which just feel like a chore, and evaluate how things are working out. I admit, I can’t immediately see any I’m dying to ditch.
N/a! Which I’m surprised by given I’m anaemic again and feeling rather washed out.
New goals:
/earning - Technically this is a restarted goal. My work circumstances have changed – there’ll be more Nicky in Beeminder than ever before! But that means I need to check in on whether my earnings are currently working out for me, whether that stays stable during the transition, whether I should up my pension contributions, etc. As before, I worked out how much I need to earn per day to cover my expenses and savings goals, and set that as my daily rate (or actually, I worked out how much I need to earn per week and set that as the goal, since I now have one day off each week). I’m confident everything will be fine… but this goal will help me gauge how things are evolving.
Changes to existing goals:
/veggies - I was in absolutely no danger of derailing, so I upped the rate a little again.
/fruit - Same here! Again, more conservative here, as I’m still trying to tilt the ratio toward more veggies than fruit (but more of both than I used to eat).
Project Bookminder:
Definitions: flat-forever goal = a goal made to remind me that I have this book and want to read it someday, with a rate of 0; standard reading goal = rate of 5/day, autoratchet to 1 day of safety. All reading goals have public datapoints with daily comments describing how I’m getting along with the book… or not even starting it, if the goal is still flat-forever!
/wag5_bloodline - I bogged down a bit in the middle because of a trope I dislike, but once I got past that part I raced through the book. And yay! A lovely happy ending.
/wag6_hoarfrost - For the next book in the Whyborne & Griffin series! I’ll need a break from the series for a bit before I read this one, but I don’t want to leave it too long.
/kd3_magicstrikes - Time to start on this! It’s now a standard reading goal.
/explodingteeth - Finished and archived. Pretty meh; lots of hoaxes rather than real “medical curiosities”.
/ancestors - This is now a standard reading goal, because I felt like reading about some archaeology!
/le3_afatalwaltz - Finished and archived! I think I’ll read something different for a bit, but I don’t want to neglect this series sooo…
/le4_tearsofpearl - Here’s a flat-forever goal all set up for the 4th Lady Emily book! In which she and Colin Hargreaves are finally married, and of course they’ll have a busman’s honeymoon.
/amanfallsfromthesky - For reading Lesley Nneka Arimah’s What It Means When A Man Falls From The Sky, a short story collection. It’s a book club read and I’ve left it a bit late, so this goal is not a standard reading goal, and is instead set up to reach 230 pages by Jun 30th.
Q: How do I get so many books each week? A: 1) Preorders I forgot about, 2) advance reading copies from publishers, 3) sometimes I just go on a spree.
I’m starting to get a lot of reading goals. I’m also reading a lot, as ever, but I’m worried this is going to get overwhelming and stressful. I’m kinda hoping keeping that in mind will remind me to be very choosy about the books I acquire!
/wychfordpoisoning - I decided to give up on this book thanks to some deeply weird spanking scenes (and no, it wasn’t a BDSM story or something – this is a normal mainstream mystery, considered a classic, in which an adult male decides to spank his teenage female cousin for her attitude, not once but twice).
New goals:
/reviewbacklog - Technically a restarted goal! I have a backlog of 16 reviews to write, enumerated in a Habitica to-do.
writethosereviews - And this goal also returns! The first goal isolates my backlog, and this one is trying to make me write reviews on time going forward.
Changes to existing goals:
N/a, as far as I can think!
Project Bookminder:
Definitions: flat-forever goal = a goal made to remind me that I have this book and want to read it someday, with a rate of 0; standard reading goal = rate of 5/day, autoratchet to 1 day of safety. All reading goals have public datapoints with daily comments describing how I’m getting along with the book… or not even starting it, if the goal is still flat-forever!
/walls - Finished and archived! Not a bad book, though I think it overgeneralised about non-wall building societies.
/afterthedragons - Finished and archived! This was a book I received to review, after requesting it on a whim, and it was lovely.
/amanfallsfromthesky - Aaand also finished and archived. Still chewing on this one; not quite sure how to rate it in the end. Some enjoyable stories, though I mostly expected the turns they took.
/seashakenhouses - Finished! A very good impulse choice on my part, whatever prompted me to make it.
/pandorasjar - Changed to a standard reading goal! A book discussing the textual histories of women of Greek mythology, which has so far proved fascinating. I’d forgotten really why I’d picked it up and wasn’t really feeling it, and then this goal prompted me to give it a try anyway. Yay for these goals working as intended!
/ironwidow - Changed to standard reading goal! A book I received as an eARC. Brutal already, since it’s based in an analogue of China and features lotus feet in vivid detail.
/braidingsweetgrass - And moved to standard reading goal as well, since this book is a book club choice for this month! So far, wish it were a bit more rooted in traditional ecology as well; it’s hard to connect to American plants I’ve never seen in the way that the author clearly would love you to.
Notes:
I have my second COVID shot this week! Booked it within the akrasia horizon, so I haven’t added breaks. I may need to beg support for help, but for now, I’m going to assume I’ll be perfectly well (which seems to be the reaction all my family are having, apart from some sore arms).
N/a! I don’t feel like I’m playing it overly safe at the moment, and in fact some of my reading goals keep slipping into the red because I don’t read during my buffer day (running out of time rather than not wanting to), but here we are. I’m guessing things will ramp up once my MSc classes start up again, though.
New goals:
/hands - My hands badly need moisturising… and I keep forgetting. It’s an ideal task to beemind for me because it’s easy to do (I can see it’s due, and just immediately do it) and yet I’m not doing it without the prompt.
Changes to existing goals:
I turned weekends-off on for a couple of goals temporarily to gain back some buffer I lost the day after my vaccine. No huge side effects, just the usual sort of stuff you get when your immune system surges into action, so not really anything caused by the contents of the vaccine itself. (People get easily confused about this, but most of why you feel awful is your body’s response: your innate immune system pumping out inflammatory chemicals and preparing to repel the invader.)
Project Bookminder:
Definitions: flat-forever goal = a goal made to remind me that I have this book and want to read it someday, with a rate of 0; standard reading goal = rate of 5/day, autoratchet to 1 day of safety. All reading goals have public datapoints with daily comments describing how I’m getting along with the book… or not even starting it, if the goal is still flat-forever!
/ancestors - The only book I finished this week! Not quite “a history of prehistoric Britain in six burials”, as the subtitle says… there’s a lot more context and discussion and yes, burials, than that… but you can’t get too mad about the poor subtitle when the content is good, and here it is. Enjoyable!
/brunanburh - Now a standard reading goal! It discusses the historical context of the poem ‘The Battle of Brunanburh’, which I’ve studied (and translated!) as a literary text. Given how far I am from my literature degrees now, it’s all rose-tinted nostalgia.
/braidingsweetgrass - This is now a non-standard reading goal: I’ve upped the daily rate to 15 pages, because it’s a book club book for this month, and I’d like to finish it this month. It still has an auto-ratchet at the moment, meaning I’m probably going to finish it early. That’s OK, but maybe I don’t want that, since I’m not loving the book, and not eager to eat it up? Hmmm.
The problem with making a goal for all the books I acquire is that I acquire a lot of books, and my number of goals is ballooning. I’d kind of like to do a supplementary goal for reading more, but where do I fit in the time?! Especially as I’d like to start adding some more exercise goals again, too… Partly it will help to be less busy (the biggest boost in my reading time was having a strict clocking-off time!) which is coming once my job transition stuff ends… I should maybe wait for that before I start making biiiiig decisions.
/dailyweight - I’ve never beeminded my weight on a daily basis, as I usually find my weight fluctuates too much. But I thought I’d give it a try since it’s something that some workerbees recommend, and it’ll be interesting to see the fluctuations. I plan on keeping plenty of buffer – and swiftly boosting it if need be – but also trying my best to give it a real shot and keep my moving average going in the right direction. I currently have a pretty clear defended weight, but it’s 10lbs lighter than my set point a year ago, so I’m interested to see what happens.
Changes to existing goals:
/weighingin - This goal is obviously getting big boosts with daily weigh-ins! I’m not sure yet what I’m going to do with this one; if I keep the dailyweight goal, then this one should go to a rate of 1/day, probably.
Project Bookminder:
Definitions: flat-forever goal = a goal made to remind me that I have this book and want to read it someday, with a rate of 0; standard reading goal = rate of 5/day, autoratchet to 1 day of safety. All reading goals have public datapoints with daily comments describing how I’m getting along with the book… or not even starting it, if the goal is still flat-forever!
/ironwidow - Full disclosure: I received this book to review. It surprised me a few times; in some ways it’s typical YA, but it has a polyamorous relationship (rather than a love triangle), and the main character is truly ruthless.
/kd3_magicstrikes - Some of the things I remember most about this book actually take up surprisingly little of the time, though they are central to the plot. Anyway, lots of fun.
/kd4_magicbleeds - I’ve set this up ready to read soon, though I won’t be starting it yet!
/brunanburh - I finished Never Greater Slaughter! It’s great; I enjoyed it a lot. Livingston writes engagingly about the historical context of the poem, and then tries to place the real battle.
/fabricofcivilization - Has become a standard reading goal, and I’m loving it. It picks apart the threads (ha) of fabric history in themed sections: fabrics, thread, dye, selling, etc.
/blackwatersister - Also became a standard reading goal! Set in Malaysia, the protagonist has to figure out why she’s being haunted by the voice of her dead, estranged grandmother.
/theparadisewar - I’m late on making a goal for this reread, so I’ve ratcheted it to the right place, of course. This trilogy is one I read several times as a teen and loved – I hope the suck fairy hasn’t visited, though I expect it has.
I want to start adding some older books as flat-forever goals, so I can shelve them instead of doing the “physically in my way” thing. But there’s a lot of them, so I’m trying to figure out how to do it in a way that isn’t overwhelming. Maybe “one out, one in”!
