A DAY FOR EVERYTHING

This week’s Novel Points of View Blog from Rae Cowie

Hello!

The rise in social media means now there’s a ‘day’ for everything, and when World Earth Day (focusing on how to preserve the earth’s resources) and World Book Night (celebrating reading for pleasure) fell during the same week, it got me thinking about my reading habits, how environmentally friendly (or not) they are, and how they’ve changed over the years.

World Earth Day and World Book Night

STORIES TO MAKE YOU SMILE

As an aside, World Book Night is offering a collection of Stories To Make You Smile for FREE, which includes pieces by Katie Fforde, Dorothy Koomson, Veronica Henry, Richard Madeley and more, which is available to download in e-book here… STORIES TO MAKE YOU SMILE

A free collection of uplifting stories for World Book Night…

Back to my bookaholic tendencies, and just how environmentally friendly are my reading habits?

E-READER

When thinking about e-books, I felt quite virtuous. I wasn’t amongst the first to adopt an e-reader but, once I had one, quickly converted to buying more e-books than paperbacks. A quick audit shows I currently have 523 on Kindle. Number read – 119. Given I read around 50 books per year, it will take me 8 years to complete my Kindle collection. I was shocked! I comforted myself that these numbers were less wasteful than if I’d bought paperbacks.

PAPERBACKS

Time to confront my paperback addiction… I always buy my monthly book club read in paperback form, as well as having a favourite list of authors I love to see on my bookshelf. Then there are the novels I know I’ll wish to share with family, with friends. Also, I prefer to read shorter fiction in paperback  – short stories, flash fiction, poetry. And non-fiction too.

Last week, I invested in yet another bookcase. The Rose Metal Press Field Guild to Writing Flash Fiction arrived whilst writing this post! I didn’t dare count the paperbacks dotted in stacks around the house, but a rough estimate of ones still to be read sits around 150. Again, using my 50 books per year reading rate, this will take me 3 years to complete.

So far, I have enough reading material to keep me occupied for the next 11 years!

AUDIOBOOKS

Over the past year, the most dramatic change in my reading habits has been the increased number of audiobooks completed. I use a variety of platforms, which made it difficult to work out how many I own. However, I can say with confidence that I have 36 still waiting to be read. Given it takes me a fortnight to finish an audiobook, this means I have enough listening to last well over a year.

TSUNDOKU

It would be fair to say I suffer from tsundoku, the Japanese word for purchasing more literature than I have time to read.

MY READING ECO FOOTPRINT

I suspected my book buying habit was hefty, but even I was surprised by the stats and know I can do better – particularly as far as my teetering paperback piles are concerned. That said, I wish to continue to support authors, but my book audit has highlighted that I need to be more thoughtful about the format I chose, and speed up my reading!

So, have your reading habits changed over the years? Do you suffer from tsundoku? How do you decide which format is best when purchasing a book?

Also, remember to bag your FREE e-copy of Stories To Make You Smile… 

Happy reading!

Rae xx

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