If you are interested in how I did with the writing challenge I have a blog post here where I have separated out talking about my writing – https://thebacklogquest.com/feethewriterbee.com/?p=19

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.

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.

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

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.