Tag: books

The Reading To Do List

A writers’ prompt got me thinking about my reading list. The actual question is “What are you reading?”. Well … nothing. My readling list is littered with books once started and twice discarded. I have read a book all the way through in quite a few years. I am not sure why this happened but I have a clue that it might be due to the web. I read a lot of web content. I read long form and short form content on blogs and technical news sites. I’ve allowed the now to distract me. I’ve resolved several times to fix this situation. But I never do. Another thing I need to do but just can’t seem to get started.

So here’s what’s on my reading list. But I haven’t ready much of it.

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GoodReads
You can find my list on Goodreads.
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Readmill bites the dust

One of the consequences of Readmill shutting down is that I've lost track of my reading progress for any of the books I was reading along with my annotations. I am a victim of the ease of use of electronic books and book readers.

Readmill does offer a way to export reading data. But machine readable XML and JSON formatted data is useless unless that data can be imported somewhere.

These files are primarily for programmers. Export user info, followers, followings, readings, highlights, reviews, comments and likes on your highlights and reviews, and highlights you liked into JSON and XML files.

What the fuck are regular readers supposed to do with that shit? But really, what are programmers supposed to do with that shit?

The most useful file I exported is a CSV file with my reviews and reading history. I imported this data to my Goodreads profile. At least I can still read my books.

What's in my eReader?

I have way too much in the un-read area of my e-book readers ( I read on my iPad using iBooks, Kindle, and Readmill ). I've had the Kindle app since it first was released on iPad, but I don't keep all my books downloaded (to save a bit of space).   I have a lot of books in the "cloud".   Most of these, I probably won't read.  Most are free or public domain books so deleting them won't be a big deal.

I like the [Readmill](http://readmill.com/) app. It feels more like an RSS reader. That's a good thing for me. I feel like I'm just reading long form articles; 10 pages instead of 200. I feel like I can finish reading. No pressure. The app also times my pace and let's me know how much longer before I finish reading.  I finished reading Cory Doctorow's [I, Robot](http://readmill.com/books/i-robot) short story on Readmill and fell in love with the author. I've queued up once of his other books, [Makers](http://readmill.com/books/makers). It's a free ePub book.

Although I have a few books in Kindle format I've decided to stop purchasing books through Amazon. Although most e-book sellers use some form of DRM, Amazon.com, uses a proprietary book format.  iBooks, Readmill and others uses the [ePub](http://idpf.org/epub) standard.  I can import DRM free ePub books into iBooks or Readmill or Kobo but not into Kindle.  I would have to go to Amazon.com and get the Kindle version of the book. I've started purchasing DRM-free ePub formated books from [feedbooks](http://www.feedbooks.com/).  [Kobo](http://www.kobobooks.com/free_ebooks) also has a lot of free ebooks.

So here's my reading lists in my various eReaders.

##Readmill##
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##iBooks##

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##Kindle##

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