Prologue

 Some of these posts I'll be doing on my phone and some I'll do on my computer. This one is from my phone. 

So often I find myself needing to talk about what I've read. I try to be an avid reader and I'm getting back into the hang of it. I don't have very many reader friends. The two I do have, I cherish our literacy conversations strongly. They're quite busy sometimes and I have one where this friend won't talk about a book he didn't like in order to "keep the peace." I've tried to convince him to allow us to talk about it but he won't. He's well read. I ponder all these musings to myself and sometimes to others , though not in the amount I want. I'm not here to sway people one way or the other. I'm not here to say I'm different from the others, not do I think myself better than others. These will just be my thoughts to jolt down. I do have a Goodreads but my ratings are more for me to keep track of what I've read and how I like them, lest I forget. Think of this like the rambling thinking of a reader. Read as you wish. I just want them to be somewhere. 

I'm not trying to be different. 

I'm not really here to critique anything. These are just my thoughts as I read them. 

I follow audiobooks as well, though it's a battle in an age of A.I and me wanting to keep physical copies. I use Libby so I use my local library a lot. Come to find out, some of the most popular books coming from my For You page on the clock app, are checked out from the library. The audiobooks anyway. I can't read books on a screen. Never have. The wait list is frustratingly long. One was a six week waiting list, another one, four people were in line. These popular books include:

Fahrenheit451

How To Influence People

All About Love

.The Four Agreements

The Giver

And many many more.

Don't get me wrong, I love the fact people want to read/listen to these books in this day and age, I'm mad at the fact I can't get the audiobook. That's just me. I work a delivery driver job and there's only so much of listening to mindless music I can take. When I hit The Wall, I need something to engage my brain. This is why I've been taking on audiobooks. So I can ponder what I'm hearing while doing other things. It's frustrating to me because it's almost impossible to get the audiobook I want. I don't mind people consuming them. 

So far I've read/listened

The Handmaids Tale 

The Testaments 

1984

Lies My Teacher Told Me: What American History Textbooks Got Wrong 

And I've just now started The Art of Thinking Clearly and physically reading Pride And Prejudice.

The goal is to get all my thoughts out about these and hopefully others. I've never been good at being consistent but my thoughts never stop. 

I've read a lot of books in middle and high school. Very heavy books. My favorite is Doctors From Hell. I picked it up on my own in middle school. I learned about what waterboarding was from another book I picked up in my early teens independently. I read Dracula in high school, again independently. I picked up and learned who my favorite serial killer was when I was about 17 from The Devil in the White City. I learned and starting loving Edgar Allen Poe from my high school classes as well as a love for poetry from Robert Frost and Maya Angelou (spelling?) who is my mother's favourite poet and person. I learned about the Australian Gold Rush in high school independently. Of course all the Harry Potter books which I still have at a young age. My favorite author is currently James Patterson and John Grisham. I do consider myself fairly read but there are other books I wish to crack open. These are the ones that just are from the top of my head. 

Yes, I'm the weirdo who has one of their old English teachers as a friend on Facebook. I'm that kid. (I don't know if anybody else does this for the record).

I'm in quite a few book groups on Facebook and they've helped me find books I remember from my school days just based on the plot ALONE. 

Despite this, I'm always amazed at something I had no idea was a book...being a book. 

My goal is also to read more slowly, taste the words on the page, sink into it, savor it for a day or two before going to the next one. People think reading slow is a bad thing. I think society in general is just obsessed with everything being face paced. We can no longer get settled on something that's long. I used to be able to pick up thick books and just enjoy them. And now I consume these thrillers I can read in like a few days to two weeks if I like them. They're short, face paced books. Don't get me wrong, they're still amazing but now I find myself....almost bored by thick books. And I hated that. I'm so happy I finished them more often then not and are now on my favorites list. But I had to fight for that satisfaction. I don't like that I finished them as a "finally this book is done!". But I loved that I finished them because it's genuinely a good book. 

Johnathan Strange and Mr. Norell - one of my favorites

Eleanor Ophelent is Completely Fine is another book I almost put down. Both books are some of my favorites. 

The Night Circus is another drawn out book but I highly recommend it to anybody I can. I'm not sure if this due to the Attention Span argument or the instant gratification of society today. The goal in my life is to SLOW- DOWN. Really think about what I pick up and try to be mindful of my reading just a little bit more. It's also a reason I want to start something like this. 

Don't get me wrong, I have A LOT of non fiction books. Mainly of psychology, criminal psychology, witchy books (I'm pagan), and serial killer books. Those are my main interests. True crime and learning about the minds of the makers. I enjoy reading all about them. I even have a book titled 'Serial Killer Quotes'. 

But I want to read more of the classics. What am I truly missing in the literature world? What can benefit me in my life right now? What other areas have I wondered about that I could look into? Yet I don't want just another self help book. I'm finding those books to be a little biased to me but that's for another day hopefully. What can I truly think about? Hell, I'm almost thirty. There had to be stuff I'm missing. 

And that's where I am right now. I want more slow books, not too hard to read and understand but something that'll get my brain working again. I want to consume and savor. 

Hopefully I'll remember this thing exists. 

09/04/2026 2104