Monday, April 15, 2013

Netguilty

I was reading this post at Jenny's Books about a Netgalley themed anxiety dream and I felt that it encapsulated a problem I've had for a few weeks now, which is duty reading.  Specifically, I have no self control when it comes to browsing, especially when there's no money involved.  This is why I never come home from the library with fewer then five books (frequently more like 15), and why I have way too many advanced reader's copies to finish in any kind of reasonable amount of time.

And the worst part is, some of them are only mildly interesting to me.  I mean, there are so many books I want to be reading RIGHT NOW, and most of the ARCs I have from Netgalley look interesting, but are things I've never heard of, by authors I've never heard of. 

Can you believe I haven't read Black Powder War yet?  I mean, how did I not race through all the Temeraire books already?  Well, it's because I haven't come anywhere near reading all the Miles Vorkosigan books yet, either.  But I can't start those, because now I'm really excited to read Daughter of Smoke and Bone, which I was so excited about when I got it for Christmas.

In the past couple of years, I've gotten really good at putting down a book that's not doing anything for me in the first few chapters.  Life is getting shorter, the list is getting longer, we've got to keep this thing moving.  But I have way more trouble doing that with Netgalley titles.  I need to get my reviewed percentage up, just so I don't feel like I'm stealing.  I think I need to shoot for 30%.  Right now I'm at something abysmal like 15%.  Maybe even worse.

I've been thinking I should post some Amazon reviews, too.  My blog posts don't translate very well to actual "reviews," so when I do a review on Goodreads it's usually completely separate from the blog.  But there's no reason not to put it on Amazon.  Though I'm not sure if I'm just heaping more work on my shoulders for no particular reason.  ARCs are great and all, but darn it, all this is cutting into my reading time.

In fact, what am I doing here?  Later, suckers--the heroine in this romance novel is about to get some action.

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