Focusing on the Books, TV Shows, Movies and Games that are already on my Shelf
Category: The Backlog Quest
I have a quest to reduce the backlog of unread books, unwatched DVDs, unplayed games that I have sitting on my self, without adding to much to my collection.
I have all the things that I want to do and as a result of my ADHD I struggle to stick to any one thing for long term. I will get hyper-focused on one thing and that is the one thing that I will work on. Then one day that focus will shift to something else and then all I want to do is that other thing and I have to force myself to work on what it was that I was doing.
Last year at the start of the year my focus was on reading and writing. I was doing the Ray Bradbury reading challenge and 1 million words in a year writing challenge. I could manage both at the start when I was excited about the challenges but once it got hard I dropped the reading challenge and was able to focus on my writing challenge and kept with my writing every weekday despite not wanting to keep writing every weekday.
The next thing I was hyper-focused on in 2023 was getting my twitch monetised. I managed to do that and then I did not do much streaming on twitch after that. I have social anxiety and sometimes its not an issue and I can talk to anyone and everyone. Other times I cannot talk to anyone at all. I feel like I did my best at streaming when I had covid and couldn’t talk because I lost my voice.
This year for 2024, I am trying to go back to focusing reducing my backlog and talking about my progress here on my blog and getting at least one of my YouTube channels active.
I currently have 3 YouTube channels.
The Backlog Quest – The original channel that I started. I am leaving most of my old videos up, post blogs, random videos that don’t fit on my other channels and multi-stream my livestreams from Twitch.
Fee The Writer Bee – My second channel that I started where I talk about writing. Its a mix of writing timers and some of my past livestreams and writing vlogs.
Backlog Quest – For my gaming videos. I started it under another name for gaming related videos. Then I changed the name and switched it to live streaming l. I changed the livestreams to the original channel since this one was copyright notifications from my Storyblocks music that I used in the background which is able to be used on the first two channels but not this one. So no more live streams and just switched it back to gaming related videos with a different name again.
As crazy as it is, I want to split out into more channels even though I know it’s not recommended. I want one channel for book reviews. One from tv shows and movies. And then a sci-fi related channel for the like of Stargate, Red Dwarf and Doctor Who and the other media relating to those, a anime/manga channel, a Christian book review and bible reading channel and one for narrating my stories. I know that I cannot do all that by my ADHD is convinced that I can run several channels and two blogs and a twitch and keep up with the writing, gaming, reading and show watching even though I could not do that for one channel and one blog.
My daily goal is to reduce a little of my Backlog every single workday and have breaks on weekends because I need those breaks.
My daily goals in the order I plan to tackle each task:
1000 Words
15 minutes Bible Reading
30 Minutes gaming, edited and posted to gaming channel.
1 episode of a TV show or 1 movie
Blog post
Work on book review and tv show review episodes. These are not getting posted, saving them at the moment while I decide if I really will put them on a different channel.
30 minutes reading – This is the last thing I plan to do for the day, in bed
I still need to try and fit exercise into this list of everything that I want to do and go to bed at a reasonable time.
I wrote a Day 2 blog post talking about how much I struggled to even get to day two, writing the Day 2 blog post on day 3. I had hoped that this would get me back into reading but. It worked for short term. I was doing another challenge at the same time where I was trying to write 1 Million Words in a year and daily write. That ended up taking priority over this challenge.
I cannot remember when I failed the challenge. The book where I was supposed to record the challenge into only had two days recorded. I have a feeling I made it to April before I dropped the reading challenge. That is the month I have failed challenges in the past. That is when I prioritise playing Guild Wars 2. The non-fiction book I was reading when I stopped is still sitting at the side of my bed in my To Be Read Pile.
It is a challenge I would like to try again in the future, but not while I have other tasks that are taking priority.
I started planning for the Ray Bradbury reading challenge in September with the plan of recording all of my books before I started the challenge so I could tell you exactly how much is in my backlog. I spent all of September and October recording books into my spreadsheet in the afternoons. I stopped in November when I participated in NaNoWriMo intending to start again in December with recording more books. Instead started with updating my 2023 Writing word totals spreadsheet and that is now completed. I still have not gone back to recording what is in my collection. So far I have 1676 books recorded. I still have one more shelf to record and four or five boxes that will not fit on the shelves and the ebook and audio books plus the computer games and videos I have since I want to know everything in my entertainment backlog and not just the books. I already delayed when I was going to start this reading challenge since the list was more time consuming to record than I wanted it to be.
The Ray Bradbury challenge includes reading a poem, short story and essay daily. I don’t have many essays in my collection as far as I am away so I changed that to a chapter of a non-fiction book. I modified the reading challenge even further to suit my reading needs. I am a Christian and I am very guilty of putting my Bible reading and Bible study aside when I am busy so I have included that as part of my personal challenge of reading my bible, my devotional book and a bible study book. A large portion of my collection is longer fiction so I also have reading one chapter of a fiction book on my list since I don’t want to neglect that part as well for this challenge. My collection has been ignored too much as it is with everything that I have been doing at the moment.
Day 1 For what I consider the Ray Bradbury portion of the challenge I read Poem: 3 poems in Prayfully by Helen Steiner Rice Short Story: The Immolation Game by Mitchell Tierney: Chapters 20 – End Non-Fiction: Yates Garden Guide 43rd edition: Introduction – Chapter 1
For my modified reading plan Bible: NIV following a reading plan from Cover to Cover: Day 136 Devotional: Teach me to Pray by Andrew Murry: December 23 – 24 Bible Study: Fixing Abraham by Chris Tiegreen: Introduction Fiction: A Dance With Dragons by George R.R. Martin – 1 Chapter
The Immolation Game which I completed was 91 pages in total which is why I included it in my short story list. I started it previously, ended up busy and just didn’t go back to it which is what has happened with most of the books on the list. It was recent enough that I didn’t have to go back to the start of the book. A quick skim of the last chapter and I was able to remember the basic premise of everything.
Everything except for the Yates Garden guide I started in previous years. The only books that was started this year was The Immolation Game and A Dance With Dragons. I started the A Song of Ice and Fire series that A Dance of Dragon belongs to in 2018. I believe every other book on the list is from 2018 as well. I hate how long it now takes me to finish books when once I would read multiple books in a day to completion.
I stayed up far too late last night after I wrote my blog post, trying to finish off the rest of my list. I had intended for an earlier night tonight, and yet I am still up late trying to finish this blog because I don’t want to fail on my new goal on day two.
After I finished my blog post, I put on the anime Bleach, which was once my favourite of the Big 3 when I started watching anime. That has fallen all the way down the list to the number three spot. At the start of the year, I started watching again from the start and am currently on the Bount Arc, which is all filler. I remembered enjoying this Arc a lot the very first time I watched the show. Uryu was my favourite character when I first watched Bleach, and I remember a lot of the Arc being about him. I am not yet at that point in this watch-through. This time around, I am not enjoying the filler episodes as much and had to take a break before continuing. I was still new to anime back when I watched Bleach for the first time and was a lot more tolerant of the filler episodes because I wanted to consume anything and everything, and it was hard to get a hold of anime. Streaming wasn’t an option, legal streaming sites didn’t exist, and my internet back then had a cap of 10GB per month for what I watched online and downloaded, meaning I was buying everything I watched as it came out on DVD and I had an entire box set of filler, I watched that entire box set of filler.
I only intended to watch one episode but watched multiple as I spent time going through the different craft projects that I have already started to work out what I would complete and have decided on one of the cross stitches that I started a while ago. I always feel like I should make more progress on my craft projects than what I actually manage to get done. I wanted to do more cross stitch today when I was watching but ended up getting phone calls and just couldn’t get myself back to the cross stitch when I got off the phone.
Reading went well last night. I read one chapter of A Dance of Dragons and had a chapter with Daenerys. She is one of the characters despite liking in the TV show, that I have struggled to read in the book. This time was easier to read than the last time she was in the book. It was like coming back to an old friend because she and a lot of the other characters that I love were not in book four. A book I really struggled to get through. I am hoping that book five will be easier to read because it has more POVs from the characters that I always found easy to read. I am not far into the book at the moment. The last thing I do today will be reading another chapter.
Guild Wars 2 playing went well. Did my dailies. Did a couple of achievements that would earn me Mastery points for Season 4 content. Did the daily achievements that I always have to force myself to do because I want to play other areas of the game and make some progress towards completing achievements for Shatterer.
I have written for the third day in a row towards my work-in-progress pile. Writing didn’t go as smoothly for me today. Intended to write at breakfast time, sat at the computer and did nothing but stare at my story. Again at lunchtime, early afternoon, and after dinner was the same. It was only just before bed that I was able to force myself to actually get some words down for the day. Some days are easier than others. I have all the words in my head but sometimes pulling them out of my head and getting them on paper is a struggle.
I need to make sure I come back tomorrow and do more of this blog and continue chipping away at reducing all my different backlogs.
The purpose of this blog was to record my progress as I worked towards reducing my backlog, something that I have not been very successful in doing. That backlog was meant to include the books that I have purchased and never read, the shows and movies I brought because I wanted to watch them and then never end up watching them and the games that build up year after year because I want to play them. That is what I wanted to focus on.
My backlog is so much more than that. It is all the stories that I started writing that I never finished, the puzzles I brought and never put together, the craft projects that fascinated me at the time but never ended up completed. I love starting new projects. I will research heavily into a topic that takes my fascination. I struggle to complete them.
Starting today, I am making it a goal to update my blog every single day, write or edit one of my stories, work on a craft project while watching a show or movie, do the daily achievements on Guild Wars 2 and read one chapter of a book. I eventually would like to add streaming a backlog game on twitch for one hour, something I started doing but haven’t been able to continue since I caught covid a month ago. I’ve had a cough and haven’t been able to talk for long periods of time, which I need to be able to do when I stream.
I have limited time to do all those tasks. Four hours in the afternoon if I go to bed at 10 pm, so I get plenty of sleep for work the next day. As it is, I am running out of time for today. It is 9.40 pm, and the only thing I have done so far off my list is play Guild wars 2 and work on this blog.
I plan to write, watch a show while working on a craft project and finally read.
I did the exact opposite that is recommended for when first starting out on YouTube. I went and brought several items, most of which could have waited until I had myself properly established.
Did I need to spend money? No, I did not. So why did I do it? I’m in a finical position that I can spend a bit of money each pay going towards something that I don’t need or at least just yet. I have always loved new technology, and these have been my first purchases of the kind for a few years. I have found most of them useful for other things outside of YouTube.
My purchases so far have been: ● Adobe Suite subscription ● Elgato HD60 ● Blue Yeti Microphone with boom arm ● Acer Predator Helios 300 laptop ● Canon EOS 1500D camera ● Overhead camera tripod
Out of all those items the only one that turned out to be an actual need was the Acer laptop. A few months after buying my laptop, my desktop computer stopped working. One power surge too many fried the power supply and motherboard. I was hoping it was only the power supply and that I could get that computer back up and running. Sadly it wasn’t. The power supply didn’t go to waste, it’s now in my Windows XP computer, replacing a power supply that sounded like a helicopter taking off. Because I already had my laptop, all I needed to do was transfer everything that wasn’t already on the laptop.
The least useful has been the Elgato HD60s. Every time I want to use it I have to change the sound settings using the Elgato software and on the computer itself. Sometimes it works. Sometimes I have to restart the computer before getting the sound to work. Other times I have to uninstall and reinstall the audio side of the Elgato software. I have not been able to get the Elgato to play sound via an analogue which is what I need to work to record gameplay footage from my XP computer which had reverted back to being my gaming PC. Something that isn’t an issue since majority of my game collection work better on an older PC than anything new. I don’t know if it’s just doing something wrong. The Elgato HD60s has been more trouble than it’s worth when I attempt to record my gameplay for more channel.
The Adobe suite I would have eventually got even without the intention of using it for YouTube. I have a copy of Adobe Photoshop CS3 on my XP computer which I wanted to upgrade for a while before I got the subscription to the Adobe suite.
The Blue Yeti microphone, I love the microphone itself one I worked out how to make it stop buzzing. The boom arm that came with it doesn’t sit how I want. I’ve watched videos on how to adjust it multiple times, and no matter how I adjust the tension on the arm, it just collapses on itself. I end up having to use other items to prop up the arm to a level that I can actually use it.
The most recent purchase is the Canon EOS 1500D camera. I have wanted a Digital SLR even before I started YouTube and my blog. It’s the first one I have purchased. The overhead tripod had made some of my video footage that I want to record easier to record while keeping me out of the footage. I was previously using two rulers propped on a bookcase which limited where I could record. This was something to make everything else for me.
All these purchases were not made at once, they were spread over a couple of years because it has not been an overnight thing for me getting my YouTube channel operational.
Do I recommend doing what I did? No I don’t. Do I regret any of my purchases? No I don’t. They’ve been fun to play around with in my free time. I have found other uses for everything, even if it’s not towards my YouTube channel or blog. Even the Elgato HD60s has been useful for outside of YouTube, I used it to convert a PowerPoint presentation to video from an older version of PowerPoint that didn’t have the option to convert to video.
I did a lot of research on YouTube and blogging before I started my channel and my blog. The thing that they all tell you to do is find your niche, narrow your focus. I tried to find just one thing I want to talk about. I have so many things that I like and want to talk about.
Did I talk about anime? At one point most of the video’s I watched were about anime and manga. I spent a lot of my time on anime forums before YouTube was a thing. The first videos I watched on YouTube were anime episodes that were split into two or three videos an episode with horrible quality and horrible subtitles. Back then it was the only way to be able to see certain shows at all. There was no legal means back then for a lot of the shows that interested me. While I love anime and do want to talk about it, what was the point of having a channel dedicated to just anime and manga when I have not been keeping up with recent anime? I stopped watching seasonal anime and have no plans to start watching seasonal anime again. I still have things that I want to talk about when it comes to anime and manga, just not enough for it to be my focus.
Or did I talk about the books? My favourite past time when I was growing up. I don’t have to buy books to talk about them since I already have a collection. I have the same issues with reading as I do anime, I don’t read as much as I used to. Since I made my YouTube channel, despite not releasing as much content on books as I intended, my reading has picked up but not back to what it used to be as a teenager. I have finished reading more books this year than in the last ten years.
Or did I talk about technology? I have always had an interest in technology. I have every single computer that my family has ever owned. I had a PDA and replaced it with an iPod touch when they were released. I went out of my way to get a Gameboy when I started working because I always wanted one growing up and never had one. I don’t buy tech gear too often since I ran out of space to store everything. My money for tech gear is now going towards paying off my house. I feel a bit guilty about owning so much stuff. Stuff that hardly gets used.
And then there was gaming. I love gaming because I love playing through a story. My favourite games are DOS and early Windows games that tell a story, point and click adventure games being my favourite. I love watching gaming channels on YouTube. I watch some game-through but prefer those that talk about the history or facts about the games. I don’t feel like I know enough about any game to dedicate a channel to just games. I now spend more time watching other people play games rather than playing them myself. The only game that I play on a regular basis is Guild Wars 2, and even that is much reduced in recent years. I wouldn’t be doing anything online with Guild Wars 2 because I play to connect with friends that I no longer see in person. I don’t want to mix something that I do as a break for work with something that while a hobby is a form of work. I still need something that gives me a break, and that thing is Guild Wars.
I wanted to talk about it all. I want to talk about what I am reading, playing, watching. What technology I am using. So I decided that despite all the recommendations to have a narrow focus, that I was going to talk about my books, DVDs, games, technology, anime and manga on the one channel and see what I enjoy talking about long term. That is where my blog name and first YouTube channel name comes in, The Backlog Quest because it will be a quest to get through all my unread books, unwatched videos and unplayed games. I will get the chance to talk about different technology along with way because I have different consoles for the games in my backlog.
I recognised that one hobby did not fit on my YouTube channel dedicated to reducing my backlog, and that is my writing. Writing is the hobby that I do the most of in my free time. It’s what I talk about the most in my day to day life. I don’t feel that I know enough about writing to have a separate blog for writing which is why I have a section for it on here despite having them separate on YouTube channel.
So attempting to narrow my focus was really a fail. My passions are too broad. While my overall likes have stayed the same for many years, my attention often shifts between my hobbies. I am trying to get myself to the point that I do a little bit at a time of everything. For right now, that is not working. I have just accepted that I have a broad focus and will work around it.
I have many many books in my collection, both physical and digital. When it comes to my physical collection, far more of my books are unread than read. I want to change that without unhauling unread books. My Kindle and Audible books I have read or listened to about half of what is in my digital library.
There was once a time when I had read every single book that I owned, some of my books multiple times. I was a frequent visitor to the library, borrowing out dozens of books every week. Now I am lucky if I finish a book at all in a week. What happened? I grew up. I started working full time. I had other commitments after work that took priority. A lot of my free time that was previously reading time got taken over by writing my own stories. Earning an income, I now had money I was able to budget towards books. I would buy a book or two every week. When you are buying a book here and there but don’t have time to read them, those books build up. I now have over four hundred books that I have not read not counting my mum and grandfathers books I now have on top of that.
I was getting overwhelmed while trying to choose what books to read from my reading list. I don’t want to cull any of my books because I picked them all for a reason. I want to read all the books I own. Who knows, there may be a hidden GEM in my collection of random books I picked up on a whim that will become a new favourite.
I like reading multiple books at a time. So when I was working out how to choose which books to read next, I have broken up my reading list. I try to read one physical fiction book, one fiction ebook, one nonfiction book. My nonfiction book does not matter if it is physical or ebook format. Last but not least, one audiobook.
Finding the time to listen to audiobooks is easy, I do that on the way to and from work, while I am cleaning, mowing or any other task that allows background noise. I went and removed the music from my phone so I wasn’t tempted to only listen to music while driving. Majority of the books that I finished last year were audiobook, and that is the same for this year so far as well. For my ebooks, I purchased myself a new Kindle Oasis to replace my old Kindle Keyboard that was starting to have issues. I need something that was easier on my eyes than reading off a phone screen which leaves me with migraines and eyestrain. I only have issues with eyestrain with the Kindle if I have been reading for hours and hours on end. I didn’t realise when I was upgrading my Kindle that the Kindles now have a backlight. I can now read with the lights turned off which I have found useful when I have wanted to read while staying with friends and wanting to read in the middle of the night but not wake anyone up, without having to resort to reading from my phone like I was doing previously. The other thing I like is the fact that the Kindle Oasis is water resistant. Most of my time reading off my new Kindle had been reading in the bath. Despite being water resistant, I still don’t trust having electronics around water, so it is in a ziplock bag while I am reading in the bath. I don’t read in the bath so much in winter, but during summer on a stinking hot day, it is nice to have a long soak and read without the worry of accidentally ruining a book.
With my nonfiction choices, it is a case of whatever subject takes my fancy at the time. I don’t always have a nonfiction book on the go since these are mood reads more than anything else.
With my physical fiction books, I could have easily started with reading my books shortest to longest to get more books to my read pile, instead I choose to read A Song of Ice and Fire series first and then after that series is completed I will decide from there what I am going to read next. I try to read a couple of chapters before I go to bed each night, just reading until I feel myself starting to drop off. I am reading nowhere near as much as I used to before bed. Sometimes I am lucky if I even finish one chapter.
As of 27th May 2020, my reading list is: Physical Fiction: A Storm of Swords by George R. R. Martin ebook Fiction: Second Daughter by Susan Kaye Quinn Audiobook: The Restaurant at the End of The Universe by Douglas Adams Narrated by Martin Freeman Nonfiction: Fixing Abraham by Chris Tiegreen
Today I will be talking about what I added to my backlog in January.
My first purchase for the year was Pokemon Blue. The last of the Gameboy Pokemon games that I needed to complete the Gameboy portion of my collection. I still need to get the most recent DS games, and I am still deciding if I will add the Pokemon Let’s Go Games to my Pokemon collection.
The next purchase for the month was the Song of Ice and Fire series. I went to the bookshop looking for something else they didn’t have, and this set was on sale. I have the first two books from the series already, so two of them don’t count as adding to my backlog. I purchased this set because it was cheaper to get the first two book again then it was to buy the other five books separately.
You won’t be seeing me read the Song of Fire and Ice books anytime soon. I am waiting for Game of Thrones to finish airing so I can fully separate the two. I want the full enjoyment of the TV series without looking at the books and comparing the two.
The next item I purchased I had previously listened to on Audiobook, and it was something that I felt that I needed to reference in paperback. It was only when I got home that I realised I had purchased the wrong book. I purchased Barefoot investor for Families when I was trying to purchase The Barefoot Investor, which I went back and purchased a few days later. I completed these books during January and have a video posted with my thoughts on these two books.
Over Christmas, I read Three Dark Crowns by Kendare Blake, and after completing book one, I wanted to jump right into book two so attempted to track down a physical copy. Everywhere I went they were sold out, so in the end, I purchased One Dark Throne on Kindle. The third book I didn’t have the same problem with I was able to pick up Two Dark Reigns easily enough.
I had originally planned for this video to come out last weekend. However, the DVD’s I am about to talk about hadn’t arrived. If the DVDs hadn’t arrived this week, I was just going to add them to my February video.
The following of what I ordered is all anime. I like to keep an eye out for Madman sales, and during January they had some very nice reductions.
I got eight volumes of One Piece, volumes 29 – 36
Volume 25 of Bleach. I am going to have to remember I don’t have volume 24, that it is not misplaced. The Bleach individual volumes look to be out of print now otherwise I would of picked up that volume as well.
Code Geass Akito the Exiled Episode V To Beloved Ones. I’ve been waiting for this volume to drop in price. Now I have all of them I’ll be able to watch. I’ll probably follow it up with a re-watch of Code Geass as either a refresher or to wipe this out of my mind if it ends up being something I don’t like.
The final Item I added is the series Rin-ne Season 1 and Season 2. Only season 2 is in my backlog. I watched season 1 on Crunchyroll when it was airing. I would of brought this series blind even if I hadn’t seen it since the manga author is Rumiko Takahashi who wrote Inuyasha and Ranma 1/2 two series that I have and love.
While I added 12 DVD volumes to my collection, most of these are pre-existing series I already have and would be added to as I got up to so this is only 1 TV series added to my backlog this month. One game and nine books.
I didn’t stay ahead of my collection this month adding the same amount of series as I completed. And adding more books then what I read for the month of January. And I added a game but didn’t complete a game.
While my youtube channels The Backlog Quest isn’t just booktube. Majority of what I plan to be covering on my channel is books at least judging by what I completed in January and what I’ve already started for this month. Despite having a mixed channel, I thought that it was still appropriate to try this tag out for myself.
Why did you start this channel? I started my channel because I want to talk about what I love. I just didn’t know what to talk at first since I love a lot of different things. I first considered doing a gamer channel since I’ve always loved video games. Then I considered doing an anime and manga channel as a way to encourage myself to watch anime on a regular basis like I did in the past.
I didn’t want to lock myself into those channels. With gaming when work gets too busy, I don’t have the energy to play games. And with anime and manga, while I love it, I haven’t watched anything on a regular basis since 2012, and if I go through a stint of disinterest again, I will have nothing to say.
The other thing I have always loved is reading, so I considered talking about books on my channel. I’ve always loved reading even if my pace of reading has slowed to what it used to be.
While I had watched a lot of channels about games and film I had not watched a whole lot on books, so I looked it up to see if it was even viable to talk about books on youtube. And I found the booktube community, a community I didn’t even know existed till I decided to start my channel.
I’ve been planning a youtube channel for a long while now. At the end of 2017, I went and counted all my books that I own and have never read and that number of unread books was far higher then I liked. If I read one book every day for the next year, I would still have books in my backlog left over.
While I was already counting books, I also counted my video games and DVD collection. Everything I had never looked at was far too much for my liking, and it is all videos I eventually want to watch, games I eventually want to play and books I eventually want to read. Buying a couple of items here and there build up after several years. This was also to encourage myself to buy less books. It didn’t work.
After much thinking and research that said a mixed channel wasn’t the most viable option, I decided that I was going to do a mixed channel anyway where I tackled my entertainment backlog and talking about completing items from my collection which doubles as a way to keep myself accountable. If one of the items doesn’t work out, I can always drop that section next year or even separate everything onto different channels. I’ll see how everything goes for a year before I decide what direction I am going to take this channel.
I named the Channel The Backlog Quest because it is going to be a quest to reduce my backlog. I want to get back to the point that I can buy and read a book without feeling guilty because of how much I already own and have never read.
What are some fun and unique things you can bring to Booktube? The first unique thing is you won’t see me on camera. I don’t like being on camera or having my photos taken. I do want to have more video’s on my channel eventually, just without me in them. I trialled filming a book tour of my backlog books when I was still practising. My hands shake too much. For now, I will only have still photos and revisit videos in the future. I haven’t seen any other booktube channel without the person on camera. If you know any, I would love to check them out.
The second unique thing about my channel is because I plan to reduce my to be read pile I don’t plan on having too many books in my hauls, and I don’t plan to read to many newer releases.
I don’t want to add to my unread pile at a faster pace then I can read it. I will be adding to series I only partly have and authors I have been following for years.
If something peaks my attention when I am looking through the book stores and kindle, I usually end up buying them. This is something I am trying to reduce doing. I ended up with a big backlog in the first place from still buying a couple of books here and there while I wasn’t reading as often.
What are you most excited for about this new channel?
It’s all exciting. Building up my confidence is exciting me the most, which has already improved a lot. I first started trying to record videos in January 2018, which is a year ago now. I stuttered over every single word. I still have a long way to go. At the moment, I found that I have been talking too fast, so I have been working on slowing down my pace down while still sounding confident. As soon as a slow down, I don’t feel I sound as confident.
Why do you love reading? With fiction, I love stories and how I can get drawn into the world. I sometimes get drawn in enough it feels like I am actually there. With non-fiction, I love learning new things from books, find out other peoples experiences, how they lived there own lives.
What book or series got you into reading? I don’t have a book or series that got me into reading. I just loved books as far back as I can remember. I grew up around lots of books. There are big readers on both sides of the family.
My grandfather, who passed away before I was born collected books, and my mum had part of his book collection. I always wanted my own book collection just like his. I wanted a library in my house. And having a library in your own house means reading the books in it, not just collecting them for the sake of having lots of books.
What questions would you ask your favourite booktubers? Can we hang out and talk about books in person?
What challenges do you think starting a booktube channel will be the hardest to overcome? What I am finding the hardest is finding the time and energy to record and edit around work. I don’t have a lot of energy after work and the weekends aren’t always free. So it has been challenging getting videos together.
When did you start reading? I’ve always loved reading. When I was young one of my parents would read to me every night, and I loved having stories read to me.
I couldn’t read till I was about ten due to learning problems I have that relate to English which really frustrated me because I wanted to read all the books and write my own stories and it was a struggle to learn to read. It was a struggle to try and catch up to my own age group, and I still struggle with English.
When I could read myself, I would read every night and often had my mum come in and take my book off me and turn off the lights because I would lose track of time and not sleep. Reading daily, unfortunately, stopped when I started work.
Where do you read? Feels like I read everywhere. I used to do my most reading during travel to school on the bus and on the train when I used to live in the city. I started reading my first e-books on a PDA when I was travelling by train so I didn’t have to take as much with me when I would studying or was at work. I no longer live in the city, and there is no public transport, so I have to drive everywhere so during my drive I listen to audiobooks in the car so I still have a form of my travel reading time.
What kind of books do you like to read? I like reading a bit of everything. I mostly read Young Adult fantasy and young adult science fiction. I will also read classics, adults fiction, autobiography’s, non-fiction. Just whatever piques my interest which is almost everything does. Most of what I read is young adult. The young adult books just catch my interest more often.
So that’s the tag finished. If there are any other interesting tags that you think I should try out, let me know. I got a bit overwhelmed when I was looking them.
