What a week! I have now completed the Big Chuckles TBR Add-On, which has been taking up all of my time for over a week now. It is a relief to get it finished and I'm actually pleased that I decided to do it. I'm pretty sure that most of my TBR are catalogued and on my Goodreads page. There might be the odd paperback on my physical bookshelves that has been overlooked but I'll come across them when I'm rearranging the bookshelves in the coming weeks or months. I haven't added every single sequel I found either. Sometimes I have bought maybe books one and two, then saw five going free. No point in adding five until I get three and four, if I read that far, y'know?
Anyway I'm pleased to have pretty much completed the task. My TBR stands at a whopping 1290 books to be read but I refuse to mope about it! I have a lot of series on the list and I know I won't love everything so there is room again for quite a few DNFs as well as a lot of novellas which I can read several of in a night. I expect to see the TBR drop sometimes by a few and sometimes in chunks as I discard whole series I'm not enjoying. I'm now looking forward to getting started on the task of actually getting stuff read and DNFed! Looking at the books I've added, I'm struck by how many anthologies there seem to be! I'm not a great fan of anthologies as you have to wade through a lot of guff to get to the gems but I seem to have a few by favourite authors and quite a few zombie and dinosaur offerings. It shows what can lurk in the depths of the e-readers as I don't recall grabbing most of them!
I also found LOTS of urban fantasy, which is worrying when I seem to have lost the love for it recently. Maybe some of these offerings will kick-start my interest again! I'm pleased to discover lots more horror, zombies and apocalypses and lots with snowy settings! Now the problem will be deciding what to read...If anyone is considering doing this task, I say go for it because I'm finding it better to face up to the real number of books and get started reducing it for real. And you can always join me for Tackling The TBR which resumes this week!
On a side note, who else is worried about this coronavirus??? I'm getting nervous about it because it sounds like the plot of a zombie novel I read recently and a pandemic series that gave me sleepness nights! I'm dragging my dad out for supplies as we speak (he is being surprisingly understanding about my prepper panics!) and if I had a cabin in the countryside to hide in, we'd be there already!!! I'M NOT READY FOR THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE, ME!!! I'm woefully short of anti-zombie weapons, I need more food and water in case of a zombie siege situation and medication is in short supply! Oh to have a rural compound to live in!
Wow, if I had 1290 books, I wouldn’t know where to start. Congrats on getting them all sorted. Good luck with reading them!
ReplyDeleteAj @ Read All The Things!
You're right, I didn't know where to start at first! I'm now easing in with a few prequels and short novellas to try a few new authors, plus I have a pile of dog starring apocalypse and zombie books for next month. That's as far ahead as I'm planning!
DeleteThat's great that you now know how many books you have and got it added. Yeah, I've been hearing a lot about the Coronavirus and the videos on Twitter are scary. People just falling over.
ReplyDeleteI should have all but the odd one here and there registered now so it makes life a bit easier! I'm really concerned about the virus even though there are no confirmed cases in the UK yet. I've read so many pandemic disaster books that it makes me a bit panicky at times over stuff like this!
DeleteFirst of all, winter sloth is adorable. I was watching the new today, and saw that a case of the coronavirus was confirmed in the city where my daughter lives. That's scary. I hope they can get this one under control.
ReplyDeleteHe is cute isn't he!
DeleteOh no, you wouldn't be human if you weren't concerned about the virus under those circumstances. We don't have a confirmed case here yet but when it starts, I'm hibernating again...
The coronavirus is a little worrying, isn't it? Cases keep cropping up here in the U.S. What's up with all these new viruses starting up in China anyway? And why do they have to share them with the rest of the world? ;D
ReplyDeleteI always wonder why these pandemics all seem to start in the same places. I need to get a few more books on viruses and educate myself!
DeleteI'm keeping an eye on the coronavirus, but a lot of the stuff on twitter and even the news is inaccurate. The thread by Dr Eric Fiegl-Ding on twitter which is scaring people silly is particularly inaccurate. He talks about it having a high R0, estimated at somewhere between 2.5 and 5, and claims he's never seen anything as high in his life.
ReplyDeleteHe's lying, or he's a really terrible epidemiologist. Several diseases you'll have heard of have similar R0s: norovirus (up to 3.72), HIV (4), SARS (4-5)... and much higher, like mumps (10) and measles (18). R0 just means "reproductive number", and it's talking about the number of people who will (on average) get infected from a single case. It doesn't reflect lethality, only spread. This one spreads well, but not as well as mumps or measles.
I don't think we have a good estimate of the death rates due to the new coronavirus, because China are holding back information (as they always do). At this stage, from the evidence, I think robust public health measures can bring it to a standstill, but we'll see what happens when we're working with more accurate information.
(You might remember I have a biology degree and wrote my dissertation on tuberculosis. I have some degree of knowledge of emerging infectious diseases and can understand scientific papers, and have read ones about this. I hope this is somewhat reassuring to you.)
That kind of twitter thread helps nobody does it. You'd think a so called expert would know better. Sounds to me like he's looking for attention by scaring everyone. I think I'd rather trust your information than guys like that as I've seen you reviewing books on various diseases. I might need to educate myself a bit more on the subject.
DeleteThe news is always vague about viruses and stuff and with China being so secretive most of the time I can get why there is so little information! I do have a decent anti bacterial stash, masks, gloves etc and a good stock of food and water so even if there is an outbreak in my town, I'd be ready for the worst!
I very much appreciate the information you gave me and I do feel a bit more reassured! I certainly do trust what you say on these subjects!
I love that little sloth. You've gotten a lot done with your project. I'm glad that you're getting caught up because I know it will make you feel accomplished to have it all laid out. Mr. Barb is convinced something will happen to make zombies one day and yep, I have to agree that I think the coronavirus stuff is pretty scary!
ReplyDeleteIt's a very cute sloth. Sloths are pretty cool and laid back guys so I sort of envy them! I've read so many zombie books and every method you can think of has caused a zombie outbreak, everything from GM food to space dust! So pandemics do concern me a bit in real life! I do need to construct a better zombie plan. Our fence blowing down doesn't help!
Deletegreat job. huge accomplishment. i am concerned about the virus too. i feel china is lying about how widespread it is. because of travel, i feel this will be humans downfall...a virus that wipes out one third or more of the population of the world.
ReplyDeletesherry @ fundinmental
China seemed pretty slow in reacting as usual and it seemed to take the UK an eternity to start checking people at the airports! Viruses are my biggest fear for human survival too!
DeleteI know that it feels good to get some final numbers. Now it is on to the fun part :) I do hope you enjoy some of the books you found. The coronavirus is scary stuff!
ReplyDeleteHopefully the reading part will go pretty well now that I have a proper start total! I'm trying not to worry about zombies with this pandemic but with all the things I read I can get a little paranoid!
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