Do I have an unhealthy relationship with Excel? Maybe

So, I don’t have anything to tell or show in the knitting department so I was thinking about what I could write about instead. BEcause, you know, if I don’t keep writing, it will be like before and I won’t be writing even if I have something to tell and then I’ll be like “I would love to have a blog… oh wait, don’t I have one?” yeah … so you need to endure my randomness

Last week I found myself reflecting on my reading habits. Maybe because I had got me the BBC Jane Eyre mini series and the 2006 Persuasion movie from the library, or because I browsed through the blog of a new penpal who writes book reviews. I was asking myself, Do I read enough classics? Do I read enough contemporary literature? Should I read less historical romances, because frankly most of them bore me to death… that sort of thing …

I’ve been keeping a digital book list since I was a teenager. I mean, I’ve been an avid reader since childhood and I’ve been obsessed with  lists and keeping track of my reading. As a child I tried to write a reading journal for a while but kinda failed at it. I still have it though, it’s really cute =) I am a bit obsessed with lists… I said it… I like to organise things and I like to analyse things and when I took some excel classes last winter I was amazed. I love excel. Yeah, you can go and shake your head at my weirdness now… but then look at what I did to my excel list last week!

My list is quite exhaustive. Everytime I see something I might like to read, I add it. Everytime someone recommends something to me, I add it. And everytime I add details like, who recommended it, and the date. There were a few old entries, some of which I deleted last week (there where like 20 books from Wolfgang Hohlbein on there whom I adores as a teen but I haven’t read anything by him in years and it’s not really my style anymore). Oh and there are of course all the books that were, back in the day, on the WB’s Rory’s Book Club list. My goal is still to read all that are on there but it’ll still take a while (I read about 25 of them, 87 still to go). Right now I have 301 books on my to-read list. By the way, 54 of them (that’s 18 %) were recommended by my dear Emma … at my current pace of about 20 books a year it will take a little more than 13 years to read all of those books. Well, at least I won’t get bored

On my other page in the excel file I have my “read” list. And this is what I reorganized. I have pretty good tracks of what I read since 2006 with some entries for 2005 and 2004. My strongest year so far was 2007 with 36 books. I know that not very much, compared to what other people read … but compared to what I read in 2011 (15) it’s a lot. Anyway… where was I? Yes, I reorganized that list. I added genres to all the books I read. That wasn’t easy all the time but I tried to keep it broad. So my genres are Contemporary (everything written since the 80s maybe and that isn’t considered a classic, and also not Fantasy, Historical, Horror, Mystery, or Chick Lit), Classics (everything written before roughly the 80s and that is commonly considered a classic), Fantasy (this wasn’t always easy,  because obviously some books contain fantasy elements but aren’t really fantasy novels. Also I put all young adult fantasy novels under fantasy because it’s the fantasy element that makes me pick up those books and all fantasy novels that feature vampires under Vampires) which brings me to Horror/Mystery/Vampire. I have single genres for these but the numbers are so small that for counting I put them together. Historical wasn’t an easy category either. In the end I decided that these were the classic German historical novels that are nothing but historical romances most of the time and well, I added the Outlander series to this as well but not for example The Bookthief or The Joy Luck Club, or Atonement which, by common standards, can all be considered historical novels but all have a very different vibe to them than the German historical romances I read which are much more along the lines of the Outlander series. Does it make sense? Then I had a few difficult cases. What was I to do with the Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants? I put it into Children’s/Young Adult even though I had put other Young Adult novels into other categories, and then I added Chick Lit to a few books that I felt were more … well… chick lit (The Nanny Diaries, The Timetraveller’s Wife, My Sister’s Keeper). And then I decided to add single categories for both Harry Potter and the Disc World novels. And there’s Non Fiction but really, there are only two non fiction books and I never added the non fiction literature I read for uni, and I don’t read much non fiction for pleasure …

I realized that for what I was doing, just organizing my list and counting what kind of books I read, my system worked. But I also realized the limits. Libraries for example have to organize very differently and other catalogues that are to be searched systematically have to be organized differently again. I had heard my book studies professor, who was an academic librarian by training, complain about cataloguing but realizing it myself as I was writing this list was a very different thing. This only makes me want to become an academic librarian more, though. I want to learn about the ways of categorization and the technical aspects of it. (I only know some very basics things about horizontal and parallel systems).

So … anyway… this was fun and interesting and I love my new book list.

oh and one more thing, I had to laugh so much at this…

oh there’s a typo… anyway… look at the highlighted part… isn’t that funny… two books with the same title, in English and in German, both recommended by penpals, but by different authors and about a year difference end up together on my list  … and yes, my list is that weird mix of English and German … my mind is, too you know…

Those kind of books …

Last night I finished Wizard’s First Rule by Terry Goodkind. It took me about two weeks. I read a lot though, could hardly put it down (it is because it is a very long book and because I should be kind of busy with my thesis that it still took me two weeks). It turned out to be one of those books.

Let me explain. I read a lot. Not as much as some people read but still more than most. Also, the way I read could be called steady. I always have a book in my purse/bag and read when I have some spare time. I read for about an hour on at least three days a week, I’d say, more at the moment, when nothing forces me to get up early. What I want to say is that I am usually a slow reader and it is this steadiness that makes me an avid reader.

I also read a vide range of books. Everything really, except crime. Sometimes even crime. But I am always looking for those kind of books, those  that will keep me wake all night, that make me strangely distracted while I’m not reading, those that make me dream about them, those that will remain friends for me

I find those are far too rare. That is why I love finding them

So this one was one for me. I’d say I had dreams about Richard and Kahlan in one in three nights these past two weeks (when I was not dreaming of my book studies professor examining me in Charms….Wingardium Leviooosa *swish and flick* … weeiiiird! :p). I am so fond of these two and I am  not even sure why. I was even before I started reading the book because I had started watching the TV show back last fall. It’s very different but really good as well. I’m enjoying it immensely =)and yes, as I said I am really fond of Richard and Kahlan, and gosh I just love the ending of the book… =)

So… am I actually saying anything with this post? Well, yes, one thing is that I am really glad that every time I think books start to bore me I find one of those books.

The other thing… I noticed last night an interesting detail maybe, that I surely have to give more thought … it seems that the one thing a lot of Fantasy novels have in common is that the key is love. Again and again it is love… protection by love, like in Harry Potter when Harry is protected by his mother’s love when she died for him. In Wizard’s First Rule, Richard is protected by love as well. Interesting. I can’t really think of more examples but I will keep my eyes open. Apparently in worlds in which there is magic, love is the most powerful magic of all. Even outside of fantasy worlds, love is often called a force, isn’t it? I don’t yet know what to make of these observations but I am thinking about these things.

On a side note, my leaves and flowers shawl is finished and I’m making good progress on my self-designed fingerless mittens. I can’t wait to show off these and add the fingerless gloves pattern to Ravelry. Gosh, isn’t that exciting? A pattern on ravelry. It has its flaws though… but I’m trying to get it as good as possible and then I’ll have to rely on people who try to knit it (provided that anyone will actually want to knit them ) to tell me what to improve on it. I hope to be able to publish it on Friday the latest